Paper Planes - Composition

Composition

"Paper Planes" is a worldbeat rap ballad and alternative dance song. Chris Power of BBC Collective terms the song as inventing a new genre – "gangsta shoegaze". "Paper Planes" follows the "nu world" music style that M.I.A. categorizes Kala as presenting. According to the digital music sheet published at musicnotes.com, the song is written in the key of D major, with a beat of 86 beats per minute. M.I.A.'s vocal range in the song spans one octave in the western music scale, from the lower note of F♯₃ to the higher note of F♯₄. Written in common time, the song is in verse-chorus form with a bridge before the fourth and final chorus with the distorted guitar riff that provides accompaniment to the composition playing out the piece's coda. M.I.A. chose to do the song's famous chorus in sound effects rather than in full spoken word and recorded children singing the words. "Paper Planes" incorporates elements of folk music and consists of "collapsing euphoric" synths and a "glock-popping" rhythm.

Fraser McAlpine of BBC Radio 1 compared the vocals favorably to those of "Boyz", describing them as "icy and distant" in the verse, giving way to a playground chant. M.I.A. has said that the song was written and recorded quickly in the morning and in one go, without the singer having brushed her teeth, which contributed to the vocals being "a bit weird". She also said that this is something she aims for in her vocal style when recording in the studio. She joked to Spin in December 2008 that the song "could be a rip-off of "Like A Virgin" but you'd never know because I'm that out of tune", adding that recording the song downtempo and departing from the denser compositions on the rest of the album was a risk she was willing to take. Eric Grandy of The Stranger described the chorus' gunshots as rock and roll swindle, anti-colonial cash register liberation, and integral to the song's meaning. The song, which epitomizes the lyrical content of Kala, satirizes US immigration's perception of visa-seeking foreigners and immigrants from the Third World.

M.I.A. revealed that the track was written as her and her American collaborator Diplo were breaking up in their three-year relationship and that the latter came up with the idea to sample the track "Straight to Hell" by London band The Clash on the song. A video of both recording the track surfaced online. Ben Thomson of The Guardian, citing Jon Hassell and cultural theorist Hillel Schwartz's observations about the political implications of African folk music's genesis and sampling music in the urban west, comments on sampling in the context of the song and its aims, stating "sampling is what imperialists did when they colonised 'undeveloped' lands, calling theft 'development'. Sampling is what ghettoised colonies do in revolt against property laws wired around them." According to Thomson, "Paper Planes" gives the post-colonial folk/hip-hop rapprochement a human face, who also said "the fact that this goal was achieved with the help of a sample from Straight to Hell by the Clash – who'd aimed for the same ideological bull's-eye decades before but not quite hit it – was truly the spicing on the samosa." Identifying with the ethos of The Clash, but not the "corporate, jock-rock that passes for punk today" M.I.A. told the Montreal Mirror of her motivations regarding the song "I do feel like a loner doing this, and I think punk is born out of a certain spirit that relates to thatYou have to feel like nobody on the planet understands you, and you have to have teenage angst, basically, even after you grow up" saying her views towards contemporary punk mirrored those towards contemporary hip hop and the mainstream American scene, objecting not to the depiction of women but more the treatment and reception of female artists.