Societal Values Exposed In Fancy By Iggy Azalea

People often listen to music in times of stress, creating an atmosphere in which they feel happy and refreshed. Music becomes a medium through which people can seemingly escape society and self-meditate. However, societal elements often appear in lyrics and music videos, many of which are appealing to the video’s designated audience. Instead of breaking people away from the world, music exposes them to some elements in daily life that they want to avoid in the first place. Music is connected to society through its depiction of mainstream societal values. One aspect that often appears in music is society’s emphasis on consumerism and wealth. In the music video for her song “Fancy”, Iggy Azalea is first seen browsing online through Revolve,

Critical songs often examine an inequality or ignorance, as is the case in M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” which satirizes how western society disapproves of immigrants. An immigrant to England from a developing country herself, M.I.A. portrays the life of a foreigner in her video by working in a food cart, a convenience store, and a video store, low skill jobs that society often hands to poor immigrants. Here, M.I.A. depicts the bland and harsh life of immigrants, having to take lowly jobs to survive. At the same time, scenes of her working convey the message that immigrants have a determination to succeed, even if it means humbly accepting whatever work they can. However, she includes that western societies do not share her view, instead associating immigrants with “sticks and stones and weed and bombs.” These dangerous and frightening things often linked with immigrants contradict the image of the hard working laborer that M.I.A. delineates throughout her video, effectively criticizing the mainstream’s misleading views on immigrants’ influence in society. She also states that immigrants “pack and deliver like UPS trucks,” communicating the popular view that they flood into western countries in large numbers. By describing immigrants as packages that are being shipped in, M.I.A. implies that society views them as merely objects, thus denouncing the poor treatment that immigrants receive. M.I.A. uses satirical lyrics and revealing images in her music video to denounce popular misconceptions about working immigrants in