MY TAKE ON THE M.I.A. THING

I like M.I.A. a lot - her Maya LP was one of my favorites of 2010. And I don't hold up the Super Bowl as an event that should set any kind of moral standards, even if it *is* the most watched TV show of the year. But I do think that if the NFL is going to get Madonna to perform, and if she's going to have M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj with her, they should be ready for something that isn't rated G.  Straight up.

That said, if M.I.A. wanted to make some sort of statement, she should have done it.  The middle finger didn't really have much of a point, as far as I could tell.  If she had a statement to make, I wouldn't have had a problem with that, even if it was "off-message" as far as the NFL was concerned.

Madonna's new song, "Give Me All Your Lovin'" isn't that great (I wanted to like it, the idea of Madonna, Minaj and M.I.A. on one track is a cool one), and this brought a lot of attention to it that it wouldn't otherwise have gotten (and maybe that was the point).

All that said, Madonna looked great, and I like M.I.A.'s new song, "Bad Girls." I look forward to her next record, which is coming out later this year.