10 Dollar Lyrics

What inspired her to write the song & what is the background? "When I was like 5-years-old in India, I got to sing this nursery rhyme and win the first prize [in a children's competition]. I won a bucket, because they always give you prizes that are really, really useful for poor people at home. You'd get a bucket or a broom or a mat. So when I went home, I just always remembered this song . . . So [later] when I tried to do a song, Richard X asked me if I knew any Tamil, and I was like, "Yeah, I speak fluent Tamil." And then I went in there with some ideas that I wanted to do something really Tamil on this song, you know. So I did the first [part], the "hey, hey" bit, which to me sounded really Tamil. I was trying to get in touch with that part of me. And then it so happened that the whole content of this song turned into this thing about dial-a-brides on the internet. You could get girls that come over and marry people for visas. I felt like it was such a third world issue thing to have to live with; women thinking like that and having that sort of mentality. And I really wanted to articulate what that nursery rhyme meant at the time, 'cause I never knew it. And when my mom told me that's what it was about, then I wrote the song about it." "It's basically - Brahman kids are like Catholic kids; they're [raised] really strict. And being a Brahman in India is the highest caste you could be, and they're really religious. In India there's a stereotype that loads of street prostitutes are all Brahman kids that ran away. So in India, when I was 5-years-old they taught me this song and basically it was about this Brahman little girl. She was making roti and she runs out of oil, and then she goes to a shop to buy some oil, but when she's at the shop she finds out she's got no money. So when she looks at the shopkeeper she gives him a wink, like as to say that - you know, whatever. She's trying to hustle some free oil. And I can't believe that's the song they taught me when I was 5-years-old ... Instead of "Row, row, row your boat," I got to sing about how a little girl has no money when she goes to the shop and she winks at the shopkeeper to get some free oil. And I thought that was really interesting that these children at five get taught to sing this happy little skippy song. So then I was like, okay I'm gonna make a happy little skippy song about prostitution and all these issues that you have in Sri Lanka and Thailand, you know. Sri Lanka has got one of the biggest issues over there to do with this "beach boy" culture, and it's like young, tiny little Sri Lankan boys getting exploited by loads of tourists that go over there. And it was such a big issue and they made a documentary about it and some tourist buildings got bombed and stuff like that. It's such a mad documentary because the parents in Sri Lanka were selling their children for like 50 rupee. I just felt like if all these little third world countries are having to deal with child prostitution and stuff, it's like, I felt like I should try and start thinking about those things