Critical Reception
Writers for Slant, listing the song at number 100 on the "Best of the Aughts: Singles," its list of the Top 100 Singles of the Decade, noted the song's lyrical range and novelty in being used on fashion runway shows, saying "A runway is not the venue you expect to hear about gun culture, the Iraq War, the PLO, snipers, racial profiling, and sweatshops, but those are just some of the topics that M.I.A. managed to squeeze into the three-minute sophomore single from her debut album Arular." Adrien Begrand of PopMatters, citing the lyric “I salt and pepper my mango/ Shoot spit at the window” compared the song favourably to the song "Galang", noting that "Sunshowers" "continued the fascinating contrast between playful and defiant." Begrand described the song as speaking of urban violence and anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Similarly, Josh Timmermann of Stylus magazine ranked the song alongside "Galang" as "among the most exciting singles of last year" and that the track "managed to sound like honey even while M.I.A. rapped (as much as Mike Skinner or Nellie McKay "rap") about a man being gunned down for associating with Muslims." He concluded "M.I.A. may be a critical darling, but she’s not so esoteric in the grand scheme of things. This is music that everyone can relate to, dance to, salt and pepper their mangoes to."
David Day of Dusted magazine, in a track-by-track review of the album, described the song as one of the three best songs on Arular and containing the best lyrics, citing its lyric "Like PLO we don't surrendo!" Day praised the use of the sample in the chorus, stating it brought the song "a real pop flavor that has crossover written in calligraphy. The beat, minimal like Missy and Lumidee, serves to spotlight her wordplay." Betty Clarke of The Guardian, noted the lyric "I bongo with my lingo/ Beat it like a wing yo / Can't stereotype my thing yo", writing "a fractured backing of hip-hop beats and dancehall rhythms is peppered with poetic slang." Robert Christgau, writing in the Village Voice noted the references to violence in the song, saying it is "everywhere, dropped casually like a funk grenade or flaunted instructively as in the oft quoted "It's a bomb yo/So run yo/Put away your stupid gun yo." But not for a moment does the violence seem vindictive, sadistic, or pleasurable. It's a fact of life to be triumphed over, with beats and tunelets stolen or remembered or willed into existence." Ruth Jamieson of BBC called the song "achingly beautiful" with its "unsettling, unusual but ooh-so alluring vo-coded harmonies" singled out for praise.
Read more about this topic: Sunshowers
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