M.I.A. and Main Stage Discomfort

In an interview on Spinner.com M.I.A. admits some discomfort with playing the main stage at Coachella '09. I appreciate her reasoning-that it was weird to transfer from a dance show in the Sahara tent in '08 to an artistic concert this past spring. I didn't see her show in '08 but I found her performance this year to be big on the hype and little on the music. I thought perhaps M.I.A. is vastly overrated and sensationalized, but maybe it is true that her artistry is more at ease in a subtler setting. It will be interesting to see if she evolves into her superstardom, reverts back to her off-the-beaten path origins, or just simply fails to make an adjustment.

I loved your set

at Coachella this year, but it seemed like you weren't as comfortable playing on the main stage as you were in the dance tent the year before. Is that accurate?

Honestly, it's like when Daft Punk played .. .Daft Punk have got way more music than I have and time in music than me and they still played the same Sahara Tent that I played in 2008. I think it just has to do with dance music. I just always counted my stuff as dance music. And what happened between Coachella 2008 and 2009 is that 'Paper Planes' had gone mainstream and people started seeing me as an "artist" as opposed to a "dance act." It's really weird. 'Kala' got to, like, Number One on the electronic charts or something and I just processed it always like that -- I make electronic music. And it was really weird because then I was in this other realm where I had, like, 50,000 people, but it didn't feel like being in a club. And maybe in my head and who I am as an artist, I needed to digest that and I felt like I just wasn't ready to turn the main stage into a big club.

I would've much rather moved the main stage into the tent. But when I had it in the tent, there was just so much chaos. And you know it's not like I planned it; that's just how it was. People were climbing up the rafters and people couldn't fit in and stuff. And there was like a huge reaction to that and a reaction against Coachella about that. Loads of people wrote in saying "You should've put M.I.A. on the main stage. Why did you put her in the tent?"