ReportWire

Tag: Kesha Rose

  • Dionysus Beware: Party Girl Gods Charli XCX and Kesha Finally Join Forces

    Dionysus Beware: Party Girl Gods Charli XCX and Kesha Finally Join Forces

    [ad_1]

    Perhaps saving the best for last in terms of who she wanted to unveil as a collaborator on her Brat remix album, Charli XCX has at last given fans an overdue Kesha feature. Really, it should have happened long ago, but perhaps Kesha wouldn’t have been “at home” in the Number 1 Angel or Pop 2 universe (even if, somehow, Lizzo managed to fit into the latter). On Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, however, any style—anything goes. And Kesha is undoubtedly one of the OG brats (along with Blackout-era Britney Spears)…embodying the definition long before Charli fully crystallized what it meant.

    After all, Kesha was the one singing solely about partying and waking up hungover only to do it all over again on her early albums, Animal, the Cannibal EP and Warrior. Hell, she even had a song called “Sleazy” (on Cannibal) that spoke to the core of what “being brat” is all about. And yes, she was also all about glitter (this was before that particular party girl accoutrement started to get more flak for its anti-environmental properties). And Kesha, too, understood the value of a remix album, releasing a successful one in 2011 via I Am the Dance Commander + I Command You to Dance: The Remix Album (which rolls off the tongue about as easily as Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat).

    This early period of back-to-back albums for Kesha (from 2010 to 2012) would have still been at a time when Charli had yet to even release her first studio album, True Romance, in 2013. However, that didn’t mean that she wasn’t still plenty busy making and putting out music, including her first two mixtapes, Heartbreaks and Earthquakes and Super Ultra, both released in 2012. Music that, in some way or other, was informed by pop songs of that moment as much as Charli’s own predilection for the “underground sound.” And, of course, Britney Spears.

    In fact, some listeners might not be able to avoid pointing out that the most perfect choice for a collaboration on this particular song would have been Spears (snatches of Britney crooning the word “everytime” from her 2003 song of the same name are, after all, prominently featured throughout and she was referenced multiple times in Spring Breakers, including with use of that single). Even so, Kesha is undeniably the second-most perfect choice (besides, Spears only exits her semi-permanent retirement for Elton John remixes). She being just as associated with “party girl antics” as Charli.

    This even in spite of all the trauma and sadness she also became associated with amid her endless Kesha v. Dr. Luke legal battle. Indeed, because the case was only recently settled (in June of 2023) after being tied up in court for nearly ten years since the time when Kesha first filed a lawsuit against her erstwhile producer in 2014, most of her career has been underscored by this legal battle. That said, her newfound sense of liberty from a man whose shadow loomed over her for years is apparent in the first single she released, “Joy Ride,” on her own independent label, Kesha Records.

    That jubilant aura of freedom is also present on her contribution to “Spring Breakers.” A movie which came out at the height of her party girl image in 2012. Which also marked the same year Icona Pop and XCX’s “I Love It” reached number one on the Billboard charts (and entered the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100), launching the latter into the spotlight as a key player in the music industry. And as XCX’s party girl image began to rise, Kesha’s party girl image started to wane. Not just because she was effectively blocked from making new music, but because her next album after a five-year hiatus was Rainbow, a more contemplative record compared to the party bops of her past.

    When she pivoted back to dancier music with the release of High Road in January 2020, her attempts at connecting with her audience again on tour were foiled by the pandemic. Gag Order then served up a mix of styles in 2023, bringing us to the present, with Kesha seeming to get fully back into the dance/pop genre she started out in, albeit with far more experimental flair. Something Charli XCX knows all about. Hence, the lyrics, “Every time, I make it so outrageous/Always gonna lose to people playin’ safer.” But, in the present, playing it safe no longer guarantees the success it once did (just look at Katy Perry), with XCX noting that “the niche” is being rewarded more than ever.

    As for Kesha’s own “unsafe” added verse, she sings, “Ooh, these bitches, we tied/Art is not a competition/Rating go up when the clothes come off/But a real bitch come when the dick goes up, like/Ooh, these bitches rip off/Wish they could be OG, but they not/We going psycho, we going off/Yeah, me and Charli, we the party girl gods.” So it is that Dionysus has been duly informed. And while insisting that art is not a competition while also noting that the new bitches on the scene will never be OG (ergo, truly “legitimate”) sounds like a dichotomy, well, it just speaks to the Brat manifesto of a song like “Girl, so confusing.” You can have occasional contempt for another girl while also respecting them. Again, dichotomies. That’s what Brat is all about—apart from “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra.” Accoutrements Kesha has presumably gotten on board with in lieu of glitter.

    Elsewhere, Kesha braggadociously adds, “Oh baby, you mad watchin’ me win/Do it again ’cause I’m Kesha, bitch/Makin’ me sick, nominated/All the motherfuckers better be prayin’/Singin’ my song, singin’ along/TikTok [the song, not the app] bitch ’til the kingdom come/Give ’em a hit, they can eat shit/Choke on my name when you suck on my dick.” A fine sentiment, to be sure…especially when directed at Dr. Luke or anyone else trying to stop Kesha’s party. Or Charli’s Brat autumn.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • The Only Thing to Celebrate This 4th of July? Kesha’s “Joyride”

    The Only Thing to Celebrate This 4th of July? Kesha’s “Joyride”

    [ad_1]

    Reminding the corporate overlords that Pride Month is never really over (no Katy Perry reference intended), Kesha has brought us a balls-to-the-wall queer anthem for what marks her Independence Day far more than it does America’s at this moment in time. In fact, this musical release is just about the only thing to celebrate in the U.S. right now, with Kesha never disappointing in terms of the musical offerings she delivers (particularly in times of darkness—which seem to be all the time now). Mainly because, although each new song/album might take fans further and further away from the Dr. Luke-orchestrated sound they first came to love on her 2010 debut, Animal, she always maintains a core element of her original musical identity. Fourteen years on, Kesha has cultivated a sound all her own—something between psychedelia and electro dance-pop. This being established on her 2023 album, Gag Order.

    The title of that particular record was a nod to her ongoing legal entanglements with Dr. Luke, which were “resolved” (as much as such a thing could be)/settled in June of 2023. One year on, Kesha is finally releasing music that is independent of her unwanted Svengali. Thus, it was only right that she should wait until July 4th to poetically release her inaugural single from Kesha Records. That’s right, Kesha’s not making the mistake of releasing music through any other channels but her own again. Enter “Joyride,” a moody, almost Tove Lo-sounding (musically and lyrically) song that establishes the jubilance Kesha feels over her liberation.

    So while the U.S. as a whole has little to celebrate this “Independence Day,” at least Kesha can revel in her own liberty after decades spent under the thumb of a relentless oppressor. Especially creatively speaking. At last, without having to defer to Dr. Luke or his Kemosabe label any longer, Kesha truly is what Lady Gaga would call a “Free Woman.” Because if Britney could be freed from her conservatorship, then surely Kesha’s ability to release her music as she wanted to wasn’t far behind.

    Having teased the “Joyride” promo photos on June 30th with a photo of her seductively pumping gas into a white Porsche while wearing a skin-tight red number (this combination of colors being peak “America”) in front of a station labeled “Joyride,” Kesha continued the Lana Del Rey-but-gayer gas station/7-Eleven-esque aesthetics over the next few days leading up to her independence anthem. And, in the spirit of anthems, it is unabashed and unapologetic, with Kesha proclaiming, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t even try to gi-give me shit/I’ve earned the right to b-be like this/Oh, you say you love me? (that’s funny)/Well, so do I.” The immediate sense of braggadocio established on the song is indicative of Kesha’s love of hanging out with drag queens (that’s right, she was doing so before Chappell Roan laid primary claim to the “practice”).

    As a matter of fact, Kesha chose to celebrate the single’s release into the world by posting a video of her and two drag queens singing along to it before her mother entered the frame to add to the overall campiness. And yes, Kesha has long been a provider and appreciator of camp (for one can’t provide it without also appreciating it). “Joyride” fits that very description with its zany, frenetic sonic landscape.

    An automatic earworm, Kesha proves, once again, that she’s never needed someone else pulling the strings to create her own hits. Her producer on this particular track, Zhone, also specializes in the hyperpop genre, citing Charli XCX and PC Music in general as major influences. But Kesha was doing a “beta version” of hyperpop already in the 2010s, further perfecting that sound with certain tracks on Gag Order. Thanks to “Joyride,” she’s reached a new height with the sound, which, while not “on par” with Charli XCX’s particular style, is something that Kesha has made all her own—meaning even kookier and more unclassifiable.

    Granted, “Joyride” might be described as Kesha’s version of Charli’s 2016 signature, “Vroom Vroom,” during which she sings, “All my life, I’ve been waitin’ for a good time/So let’s ride (vroom, vroom)/Bitches know they can’t catch me (vroom, vroom)/Cute, sexy and my ride’s sporty (vroom, vroom)/Those slugs know they can’t catch me (vroom, vroom)/Beep beep, so let’s ride.” Kesha even uses the “beep beep” term when she says, “Beep beep, best night of your life/Get in, loser, for the joyride.” That last line obviously being a nod to Regina George’s (Rachel McAdams) illustrious quote from Mean Girls.

    For added pop culture reference cachet (which is always required of camp), Kesha also alludes to Cher’s “Mom, I am a rich man” aphorism in the opening verse, “Are you a man?/‘Cause I’m a bitch/I’m already rich, just looking for that (mm).” Her oozing-with-horniness vibe continues in the part of the chorus that goes: “Rev my engine ’til you make it purr/Keep it kinky, but I come first.” (And yes, Kesha also has a song called “Kinky” from High Road.) Elsewhere, she continues to maintain her cocky aura with the assertion, “Makin’ every motherfucker turn/Fell from heaven, no, it didn’t hurt.”

    At times, Kesha is also channeling her inner Beyoncé, arrogance-wise. To that point, on “Alien Superstar,” Bey sings, “Mastermind in haute couture/Label whores can’t clock, I’m so obscure.” But Kesha might try to nonetheless. After all, she proudly notes, “Keep your eyes on the road/A label whore but I’m bored of wearing clothes.” Or, as she once phrased it more directly on “Blah Blah Blah,” “I wanna be naked.” But that’s the thing about the new Kesha: her lyrics are more “elegant” even if still direct. Another case in point being: “You want kids?/Well, I am mother.” A.k.a. she doesn’t need to push out any children when she’s already raised so many sons (and daughters). All of whom have been waiting for this glorious day when she could at last be deemed “independent.” As for America, well, its so-called independence is becoming increasingly tenuous. A tenuousness that might just snap come this Election Day.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • The Wonderful Bizarreness of Kesha’s “Only Love Can Save Us Now” Video

    The Wonderful Bizarreness of Kesha’s “Only Love Can Save Us Now” Video

    [ad_1]

    As Kesha continues on her Gag Order journey, the latest visual she’s provided fans with is one for the non-formulaic dance ditty known as “Only Love Can Save Us Now.” Described by Kesha herself as a single inspired by how “the ludicrosity of life can make you crazy. If anything, IF ANYTHING, can save us, I believe only love can. This song is a desperate and angry prayer. A call to the light when all feels lost.” Indeed, it is this type of rallying battle cry that people need more than ever at this point in time to keep themselves going (because we all know that humans are built to insist on “enduring” even when they know damn well they shouldn’t bother). Commencing the video with a portion of the “Only Love Reprise,” featuring the vocal stylings of Kesha’s niece, Luna, the latter’s little girl voice tells us, “This is reality, can’t you feel it?” Though the following portion of the reprise isn’t included in the video, to give more context for Kesha’s mental state, the rest of Luna’s monologue goes: “I am one with what I am. Everything in color, everything. You have to see the air, you can’t believe it.” The faint harmonization of the chorus, “Only love can save us now” briefly interjects before Luna concludes, “I wish I could talk in Technicolor.”

    If anyone has been able to “talk that way” through music, however, it’s been Kesha. With an entire career characterized by a glitter and rainbow aesthetic (shit, she even had album called Rainbow—sorry Mariah), her message has always been one of, let’s say, “peace, love and positivity.” Even through her darkest hours. Which is part of why she was so nervous about releasing Gag Order, her “least fun” album to date because it broaches topics that veer away from the party/“brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack” lifestyle. Instead choosing to explore more existential issues—this being part of why Ram Dass is a fixture on the record (therefore gets his own interlude). But because she is, in fact, Kesha, even her existential ruminations can’t help but have a danceable beat. Case in point, “Only Love Can Save Us Now.”

    Directed by Vincent Haycock (who has previously directed videos like Lana Del Rey’s “West Coast,” Florence + the Machine’s “What Kind of Man” and Harry Styles’ “Lights Up”), the video not only starts by playing the “Only Love Reprise,” but also with someone dressed in a “Kesha flesh suit” walking down the street before cutting to a close-up on Kesha’s makeup-free face as she declares, “Tell a bitch I can’t jump this, Evel Knievel/I’m ’bout to run you down the church and the steeple.” Haycock then shows us an image of a body wrapped and bound in a red tarp type of covering while sitting on a chair in the middle of a stark room—this “taut wrapping” speaking to the “gag order” theme of the record that pertains to Kesha being silenced and stifled. Something the singer has had to deal with ever since her Kesha v. Dr. Luke debacle began back in 2014 (though she did recently gain a win in the defamation case Dr. Luke brought against her in the wake of her civil suit). With this video, Kesha seems to be illustrating the nightmarish qualities of what she’s had to go through by tinging it with the surreal and absurd. For what have the past nine years of her life been if not those two things? Besides that, Kesha has never been much of a “literal” person when it comes to creating the accompanying music videos for her singles (see also: “Blow,” during which humans with unicorn heads [that eventually spew out rainbow beams as “blood”] and James Van Der Beek inexplicably appear).

    Kesha is joined in the “art gallery” room by a slew of other random people who also seem to want to find salvation of their own…or are they just there to treat Kesha like a one-woman art exhibit? Gawking and circling her as though she’s some kind of spectacle. Which, yes, is precisely what she’s had to be for most of her career, especially the parts of it that had Dr. Luke pulling the strings. Even when Kesha still brought her own unique stamp to the projects she wasn’t quite as passionate about (e.g., the Warrior album).

    Appearing in another scene against a red backdrop next to a “being” dressed in some tribalistic attire, Haycock cuts again to Kesha in the white room as she lifts her hands up heavenward, as though genuinely waiting to be saved by “Love” or “God” or whatever name one wants to give to some sort of higher power. Meanwhile, the man in the “Kesha flesh suit” keeps running down the street, a slew of impressionistic street and car lights behind him—going at a pace that indicates some spectral, likely demonic presence is chasing him. And “God” or whoever knows that Kesha has been dealing with her fair share of getting chased down by demons (maybe that’s why she chose to face them head-on in a reality series like Conjuring Kesha). Perhaps whoever starts dragging her through the art gallery/“white space” is trying to help exorcise some of those demons (“maybe I’m possessed, bitch” as she herself sings), one of which could very well be the tribally-dressed being we keep seeing set against a devil-red backdrop. But that particular “creature” is soon topped by another surrealistic entity (straight out of something from a Salvador Dalí or Leonora Carrington-esque painting) also dressed in red (with an ensemble that makes its torso look like a triangle) and rounded out by a red headpiece that features three red squares atop a purple head (with an eyeball stuffed in its mouth). And, again, set against a red backdrop.

    As Kesha keeps rocking her body back and forth in the “art gallery” as though a demon is being exorcised, we continue to see scenes of the “Kesha flesh suit” man, doing things like sitting on the sidewalk or, at last, walking instead of running down an L.A. street (L.A. being the site of Kesha’s, and so many others’, trauma). Whether or not that man is meant to be a representation of how Dr. Luke himself wore Kesha like his own “flesh suit” in terms of controlling her and getting inside her head with his verbally abusive rhetoric is at the viewer’s discretion.

    But for those trying to find “logic” in the wonderful bizarreness of the video, it would be missing the point. For nothing about what Kesha has gone through in the last decade (or really, since 2005, when the trauma wrought by Dr. Luke was first set in motion) is “logical.” Nor is most individuals’ trauma (and subsequent effects). “Only Love Can Save Us Now” is an unapologetic visual manifestation of that.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Gagging For Gag Order

    Gagging For Gag Order

    [ad_1]

    Although traces of the raw, ethereal Kesha everyone’s talking about on Gag Order had appeared in flickers on 2017’s Rainbow, something about her, let’s just say it, “aura” on the latest record seems to be resonating far more with listeners. Between Rainbow and Gag Order, 2020’s High Road was Kesha’s attempt at toeing the line between her then-fractured persona of party girl/goddess of sleazecore and her newfound sense of spirituality post-trauma. That COVID-19 waylaid any chance of touring High Road could have perhaps been interpreted as a sign to Kesha that she ought to “dig deeper.” Not to say that High Road doesn’t have many gems, including “My Own Dance,” “Raising Hell” and “Resentment,” but perhaps something about it didn’t ring true for Kesha as she sought to marry her “old self” with her “new” one. Billed as a “full return to Kesha’s pop roots, after leaning into a more country–soul sound,” High Road got its fair share of praise, but, in the end, it still seemed like the proverbial “ugly, redheaded stepchild” of Kesha’s discography.

    Perhaps being on some kind of autopilot in order to function contributed to a roteness in creating High Road that had to be obliterated for the making of Gag Order. And it is on the opening track, “Something to Believe In” that Kesha admits, “You never know that you need something to believe in when you know it all.” Prior to her epiphany in the summer of 2020 (the one that led to the inspiration behind “Eat the Acid”), Kesha likely felt she, in some sense, “knew it all” as she ignored the need for something “higher” to believe in—however cheesy that might sound. But when you exist in an industry that’s ultimately as nihilistic as the entertainment one, a girl could do well to find some spiritual guidance (after all, that’s what Madonna did).

    And Kesha has apparently found hers through not just Ram Dass (whose words of wisdom are wielded on the “Ram Dass Interlude”), but through a fondness of creating her own “Jesus Prayers,” if you will, on this record. For the repetition of phrases is key on many of the tracks (in a manner that goes beyond mere chorus). On “Something to Believe In,” that phrase is the aforementioned, “You never know that you need something to believe in when you know it all.” Among two of the only divergent verses from the chorus is the concluding one that goes, “I’m so embarrassing/So used to abandoning myself/I can’t believe I’m still alive.” This referring to all the times she let herself be denigrated for the sake of “going along to get along,” as so many women feel they have to in order to “succeed.”

    But her enlightenment about this and a plethora of other things arrives on the second track, “Eat the Acid,” a single that actually urges against eating the acid if “you don’t wanna be changed like it changed me” (this being the warning about LSD that Kesha’s mom, Pebe Sebert, gave to her). Funnily enough, it was Ram Dass who said, “I didn’t have one whiff of God until I took psychedelics.” Kesha appears to have found whatever “God” is without use of such drugs though. This much made clear as she imparts, “I searched for answers all my life/Dead in the dark, I saw a light/I am the one that I’ve been fighting the whole time/Hate has no place in the divine.” Even for someone who did her as wrong as Dr. Luke, her erstwhile producer/wannabe Svengali figure.

    He being at least part of the reason for all the toxic thoughts swirling in her head, as elucidated on “Living In My Head.” This being a track that was given a precursor on “Something to Believe In,” during which Kesha addresses some of the racing thoughts in her mind. For example, “Mind’s been racing like a stallion/While I watch it all collapsing/Kill the chaos, find the balance/‘Round we go, around we go/Greatness just a shade of madness/Ego just a face of sadness/Pain is just part of the package/Around we go, ’round we go/I sit and watch the pieces fall/I don’t know who I am at all.” But that was only a small preview of the hell that is solipsism compared to “Living In My Head.” Wanting desperately to escape her flesh prison, Kesha laments, “Oh, I don’t wanna be here anymore/Stuck inside my head here anymore/Stuck inside my head here anymore/Mm, I don’t wanna be scared anymore.” Though it’s hard not to be with the climate and AI apocalypse being upon us. Those who remember Ashlee Simpson’s 2008 single “Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)” will also recognize similar sentiments in the lines, “Get me outta my head/Outta my head/Outta my head.” This is, to be sure, a more relevant desire than ever in the landscape of constant social media infection, wherein we’re all made to compare ourselves to others (whether we know them or not) on a daily basis. Olivia Rodrigo acknowledged something similar on “jealousy, jealousy” via the lyrics, “Comparison is killing me slowly I think, I think too much/‘Bout kids who don’t know me/I’m so sick of myself/I’d rather be, rather be/Anyone, anyone else.” Kesha, too, alludes to the detriment of comparing herself to others when she bemoans, “God, I hate myself/Got to stop comparing.”

    By the time “Fine Line” rolls around, she’s started to achieve a more “I don’t give a fuck” state as she ruminates on the various fine lines between such things as “genius and crazy,” “sellin’ out and bein’ bought,” “hope and delusion” and “famous and bein’ forgot.” That “bein’ forgot” element likely a strong fear of Kesha’s as she was forced into silence amid her ongoing lawsuit against Dr. Luke that started in 2014. Which is part of why it took five years for her to put out Rainbow after the release of her sophomore album, Warrior, in 2012. Over the years of hardship and emotional rollercoastering, it seems Kesha learned one key lesson: “Only Love Can Save Us Now.” As the third single from the album, it marks the jubilant, “party girl” stylings she assured were no longer present on Gag Order. But hey, you can take the girl out of the party, but you can’t take the party out of the girl. Even if it’s a party with apocalyptic vibes (as Kesha once also said, “We’ll keep dancin’ till we die”—a similar assertion to Britney saying, “Keep on dancin’ till the world ends”). With regard to the frenetic, “all over the place” nature of the song, Kesha remarked, “I wanted ‘Only Love Can Save Us Now’ to sonically, lyrically, and emotionally reflect the severity of my mental pendulum swings. The world is so overwhelming sometimes. It requires a moment of surrender. The ludicrosity of life can make you crazy. If anything, IF ANYTHING, can save us, I believe only love can. This song is a desperate and angry prayer. A call to the light when all feels lost.”

    There’s another call to the light on “All I Need Is You”—the “light,” in this case, being Kesha’s beloved cat, Mr. Peeps (and yes, on “The Drama,” she’s sure to note that in the next life she wants to come back as a house cat). After nearly losing him in 2022, the seed of the song sprung to life. Sampling Indian philosopher Osho at the beginning, he states, “Authentic love is beyond your control. And the most basic thing which is dangerous in you is the possibility of love. Because if you are possessed by love, you can go even against the whole world.” Yes, a woman possessed by unconditional love for her cat is not to be trifled with. Which is why the full quote from Osho is actually, “They were afraid of your authentic love, because authentic love is beyond their control. You are possessed by it. You are not the possessor, you are the possessed. And every society wants you to be in control. The society is afraid of your wild nature, it is afraid of your naturalness, so from the very beginning it starts cutting your wings.” That Kesha’s early career is founded on some notion of “wildness” that eventually caused her to be suppressed therefore feels only too fitting for this particular assessment.

    Through the traumas and the tribulations, perhaps the only being she could truly trust was her cat. Thus, the potential of losing him prompts her to demand, “Tell me that you’ll live forever/‘Cause I’ve taken years for granted.” Speaking to the emotional dangers of opening one’s heart and becoming vulnerable—even to a cat—Kesha also adds, “Your love might break my heart harder than being alone.” As a song that’s representative of just how much the millennial generation has swapped out real children for pet children, Kesha insists, “You know parts of me nobody else will ever know” (cue the barrage of scenes featuring any cat’s voyeuristic antics) and “I don’t need much, but there’s one thing I can’t lose/All I need is you.” The Beatles might have said, “All you need is love,” but Kesha begs to differ here. All she needs is her cat to live forever. Or for it to at least outlive her à la Choupette.

    Among the most experimental tracks on the record is “The Drama,” which feels like a sonic companion to the moody viscerality of “Only Love Can Save Us Now.” Opening with a serene tone that explores more “Living In My Head” themes with the lyrics, “There’s a violence in the silence/And it’s coming for me/Oh, the paranoia/It’s creeping closer/Swimming in my head like a Great White,” the temperament changes entirely just when you think you’ve got it pegged as some kind of ballad. So it is that at the thirty-nine second mark, the auditory landscape shifts entirely as Kesha sings, “Build me up to feel the fall/And fall in love to break my heart/I’m bored and I’m broken/I’m self-destroying/At least it’s something to do/Oh, the drama of it all.” “It all” referring to being, well, human. Which is, despite any modern “conveniences” still a fucking bitch. Co-written with Kurt Vile, Kesha throws another lyrical curveball into the fray of “The Drama” by incorporating The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” (specifically, “In the next life, I wanna come back as a house cat, as a house cat/I wanna be sedated”). At moments giving LCD Soundsystem fare a run for its money, Kesha takes us back to the wonderfully weird experimentation of a song like “Rich White Straight Men.” At another point, Kesha notes, “I desperately wanna think people are good/But if you’d seen the things I’d seen/I don’t know if you would.” This echos another lyric she sings on “Fine Line”: “Don’t fucking call me a fighter/Don’t fucking call me a joke/You have no fucking idea/Trust me you’ll never know.” This idea that she’s seen horrors so indescribable they can’t actually be put into words is just the type of Hollywood cautionary tale to give any aspirant the chills. And yet, fame, no matter how frivolous, is a temptress that can’t be quelled.

    Maybe that’s why Kesha segues this track into the “Ram Dass Interlude,” a reminder of how ridiculous it is to place any emphasis on such thoughts as, “Do you approve of me? Do you like me? Am I good enough? Have I achieved enough?” Ram Dass then assures, “And then thеre comes a period whеre you’ve just gone through enough. And the space starts, that little blue sky starts to develop. And you start to identify with the blue sky instead of the cloud.”

    This is where Kesha’s at on “Too Far Gone.” And, while she might have found that space with the “little blue sky” Ram Dass was talking about, she can’t deny that there’s a part of her that will never come back. And that’s still difficult to reconcile. Hence, the lyrics, “Love comes with pain/I don’t know why/My whole life/Too far gone and I’ll never come back/Slipping through my fingers, damn, it’s going fast/Trying to find some meaning, something that lasts/Am I missing you or am I missing pieces of me? Am I missing you or am I missing who I used to be?” Part natural aspect of the “growing pains” that come with aging and part nostalgia for a seemingly simpler time, “Too Far Gone” also explores the theme of an “old self” being dead (“Think I killed the part of me that I like”) the way “Only Love Can Save Us Now” does via the line, “The bitch I was, she dead/Her grave desecrated.”

    Regardless, Kesha declares she won’t go gentle into that good night on “Peace & Quiet.” Accordingly, the track bears no aural tones that connote “tranquility,” so much as another frenetic dance experiment (in the spirit of “Only Love Can Save Us Now” and “The Drama”) co-produced by Kesha, Rick Rubin and Hudson Mohawke. As she considers, “Maybe I should stop and take a breath/Maybe I’m not making any sense,” Kesha realizes, “But I would be lying if I said I could do peace and quiet/Loving me is running into a house that’s burning down, baby/Honestly, make it out alive and you’ll get the best of me/So get into it or get the fuck out.” At a point in her life where she has no room for anything but candor and bluntness, Kesha riffs on the chorus of The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love” by chirping, “Monday, I’m praying/Tuesday, I’m heinous/Wednesday, I’m stable/Thursday, I’m up to something/Friday, I’m screaming/When I’m a-sleeping/Then by the weekend, I’ll need a restraining order.” So yeah, get into it or get the fuck out.

    Kesha goes back to her “zen” place on the “Only Love Reprise,” wherein she enlists her niece, Luna, to deliver the verse, “This is reality, can’t you feel it? I am one with what I am. Everything in color, everything. You have to see the air, you can’t believe it.” Needless to say, she’s passing on her “Kesha-ness” quite easily not just to her “Animals,” but to the next generation of the Sebert family.

    From that place of zen-ness comes the next song. And yes, in contrast to Ariana Grande demanding to “Love Me Harder,” Kesha, instead, goes in the opposite direction with “Hate Me Harder.” Yet, to use her “fine line” wisdom, there’s a fine line between love and hate. So maybe all “haters” are secretly obsessed (or they just happen to have a knack for the art of criticism). Either way, Kesha declares she can handle it as she sings, “I’ve graduated from caring about your opinions/Tell you the truth, babe I’ll never know that you existed…/So if hating me helps you love yourself/Do your worst, baby, gimme hell/Hate me harder, hate me harder/There’s nothing left that I haven’t heard/And I can take it, so make it hurt.” As such, she appears to want to alchemize the hate directed at her by radiating it back as love (besides, like she said on “Spaceship,” “Nothing is real. Love is everything. And I am nothing”). Plus, Kesha also seems to be of the Wildean belief, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” So, as far as Kesha is concerned, let the haterade rain down if it keeps the commentary flowing.

    While MARINA might have kicked off 2015’s Froot with a song called “Happy,” Kesha opts to conclude her album with a track named as such. After all, it’s the ultimate goal/achievement for anyone, famous or otherwise. And it seems that, at least for now, that’s what Kesha is. Or is striving to be. The sparse, yet rich instrumentation (which sounds a lot like The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”) heightens the bittersweet tinge of lyrics like, “If you asked me then where I wanted to be/It looks something like this living out my wildest of dreams/But life sometimes ain’t always what it seems/If you ask me now/All I’ve wanted to be is happy.” That, too, is what Beyoncé claimed as her “aspiration in life” on “Pretty Hurts.”

    More recently still, Lana Del Rey assured her fans at the 2023 Billboard Women in Music Awards that she wants them to know she’s happy. Then there was Billie Eilish naming an entire album Happier Than Ever after her breakup with Brandon “Q” Adams (a.k.a. 7:AMP). The bottom line is, famous people have been making it clear how much more challenging it can be to be “happy” while subjected to public scrutiny. Touching on the evolution of her mental state and perspective since becoming famous, Kesha ruminates, “I remember when I was little/Before I knew that anyone could be evil/These egos, some people, playing with my innocence like at a casino.” This, of course, reminds one of the fate that befell Britney when she was put under a conservatorship for little better reason than she was acting “hysterical.” Kesha, perhaps like Britney, has overcome that period of oppression, and whatever comes next, she wants to make one thing clear: “I refuse to be jaded/Still painting rainbows all over my face, oh/I’ve gotten used to the fall.” And with Gag Order, Kesha keeps falling upward.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Enter the Church of Kesha on “Only Love Can Save Us Now”

    Enter the Church of Kesha on “Only Love Can Save Us Now”

    [ad_1]

    Continuing the pop music tradition of incorporating religious metaphor (hear: Madonna’s “Like A Prayer,” Beyoncé’s “Heaven,” Lana Del Rey’s “Gods and Monsters,” MARINA’s “Handmade Heaven” or even Kesha’s own “Raising Hell,” to name a few), Kesha adds “Only Love Can Save Us Now” into the canon. While her previous two singles from Gag Order, “Eat the Acid” and “Fine Line,” didn’t so directly refer to her ongoing legal struggles with one, Lukasz Gottwald, this particular track minces no words.

    Co-produced with Rick Rubin, Jussifer and Stint, the moody, erratic beat is reminiscent of Kesha’s first two musical offerings, Animal and Cannibal. Despite Kesha warning fans that she didn’t feel like this record was “danceable,” instead billing it as a more “personal” album, the singer can’t help but surrender to visceral rhythms sooner or later when it comes to making music. “Only Love Can Save Us Now” proves that point as the more sinister, “irascible” part of the backing track would be right at home on any record before Rainbow. Even certain word choices harken back to Kesha’s “Ke$ha” period. For example, when she warns, “I’m ‘bout to blow your fuckin’ head through the ceiling,” who can help but think back to her also warning, “This place about to blow” on, what else, “Blow” (from the Cannibal EP)? Maybe that’s deliberate on Kesha’s part—perhaps she wants to make subtle digs at her “Dr. Luke era” to remind him that she’s forgotten nothing. Meanwhile, he actively works to court amnesia (no legal pun intended).

    As for the religious overtones, Kesha is quick to spit metaphors like, “The resurrection’s here/Can you believe it?” (one imagines Dr. Luke wouldn’t like to). She also mentions, “Been baptized in Hollywood in the Cathedral/The power of Christ compels me, I’m a demon/Keep singing hallelujah, nothing can save us.” For those convinced that the Hollywood machine is a satanic cabal rooted in conspiracy, this song will surely bring a smile of vindication to their face. Her use of religious “ecstasy” gone wrong makes sense when considering most pop stars can’t help but eventually come to view themselves as godlike (what with celebrities being the new deities that people worship). Like Taylor Swift before her on “Look What You Made Me Do,” Kesha announces, “The bitch I was, she dead/Her grave desecrated.” Except, of course, Taylor’s words were, “I’m sorry, but the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ‘cause she’s dead.” This idea that, after a certain amount of publicly-splashed trauma, a famous person “dies” and becomes more their impenetrable celebrity self than their former “human” self is also present in Kesha’s declaration. And maybe that’s for the best in some ways since, as Kesha puts it, “I would kill for secrets/All of mine been leaking/I don’t got no shame left/Baby that’s my freedom.”

    Having “nothing left to be ashamed of” is also something fellow Dr. Luke collaborator Britney Spears knows all about as she “dares” to keep posting videos of herself dancing with captions that are cryptic but not too cryptic to pick up on the underlying message of: “fuck everyone.” Especially people like Dr. Luke who were among the many to use her as what Dr. L himself called an “amazing vehicle.” As though she wasn’t even a person, just a money-making machine. Kesha echoed a similar feeling on “Fine Line” as she concluded, “There’s a fine line between what’s entertaining/And what’s just exploiting the pain/But hey, look at all the money we made off me.”

    That “fine line” was crossed many times by Kesha’s abuser, which is why it’s easy to interpret one of her lyrics as doubling for the perfection she was forced to strive for physically while under his manipulative control. That lyric being, “Goddamn perfection in his image he made us.” Not to liken Dr. Luke to “God” or anything, but he has had his fair share of authority over the music industry via his status as one of few the producers who can cite innumerable hits on the Billboard charts. Though he has yet to surpass his mentor, of sorts, Max Martin. Indeed, it was through Martin that Gottwald secured his “Britney gig.” Which prompted him to say such telling things as, “I’m excited to be co-executive producing with Max Martin, the person who kind of invented Britney, and to make good music.” Clearly, he thinks he’s the Regina George to Kesha’s supposed Cady Heron and, like, invented her as well. But no, neither man needed to “invent” Britney or Kesha. Their talent and hard work was what got them where they are (and, in Kesha’s case, there’s a touch of the nepo baby flair thanks to her mother, Pebe Sebert, already being in the business).

    But Kesha (and Britney) is done with the “goddamn perfection” that was expected of her. From Dr. Luke, or anyone else. So it is that she urges, “Yeah Jesus take the wheel/I’m going through phases.” This particular one doesn’t discount her past, but rather, incorporates it in a new way into the sonic and lyrical compositions. Even traces of the religious motif on 2020’s “Raising Hell” are easy to be reminded of on “Only Love Can Save Us Now.” For example, Kesha singing on the former, “Hallelujah I’m still here, still bringing it to ya/Ohm like Buddha” and “I’m all fucked up in my Sunday best/No walk of shame ’cause I love this dress/Hungover, heart of gold, holy mess/Doin’ my best/Bitch, I’m blessed.” The recurring topic of shame and ridding herself of it has obviously been something she’s grappled with in the wake of being mocked and having her integrity questioned ever since 2014, when she launched the civil suit against Dr. Luke in the first place. This prompting, among many countersuits, a libel one aimed at Kesha’s mother for speaking in support of her daughter on Twitter. Ergo, Kesha defying her “gag order” by singing, “I’m getting sued because my mom has been tweeting/Don’t fucking tell me that I’m dealing with reason.”

    In fact, don’t ever tell any woman (in the entertainment industry or otherwise) that that’s what she’s been dealing with in a patriarchal society. To boot, Kesha takes a risk on her song being too literally interpreted as some kind of sacrilege (because everyone is too literal these days). But if Kesha is “denouncing” religion, she at least champions the one fundamental principle that most of them are founded on: love. Alas, when “organized networks” get involved, that message quickly becomes tainted. Thus, she riffs on a simple moral that The Beatles gave us long ago: “All you need is love.” Except when some asshole fucks you over and incites you to write an album about the slight.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • The (Zen) Take No Prisoners Return of Kesha

    The (Zen) Take No Prisoners Return of Kesha

    [ad_1]

    After the release of High Road in 2020, just before the lockdowns of the pandemic would start to pop off, it’s safe to say that Kesha probably felt pretty defeated—beaten back into submission after hoping to get out on the road and tour the new record. As she explained to Nylon, “…after my last album was released right before the pandemic hit, I went into quarantine feeling very lost. There was no tour, so the album that I had just made kind of felt like it hit a wall as soon as it entered the world. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If an artist creates a piece that no one knows exists, are they still an artist? Or am I just talking to myself? The foot on the gas had been halted. The world seemed to stop spinning. My head hit the dash.”

    And yet, like many musicians who whipped into a flurry of artistic productivity as a result of touring and “being a celebrity” getting ripped away from them, Kesha started “receiving” the early seeds of inspiration for what was to become her sixth album, Gag Order (not to be confused with Gaga Order just because she’s mentioned a desire to work with Lady Gaga). The provocative title, needless to say, is a direct hit at the likes of Dr. Luke and the slew of lawyers and judges that have been involved in the Kesha v. Dr. Luke case since it first officially began in 2014. Appropriately, the term “gag order” isn’t found in the glossary of physical torture, but rather, it’s a legal phrase meaning: “a judge’s directive forbidding the public disclosure of information on a particular matter.” That matter obviously being her ongoing legal entanglements with Dr. Luke, who came back at Kesha’s civil suit with a defamation lawsuit that has another court date set for this summer.

    For someone like Kesha, known for being outspoken and candid, a gag order is an especial form of cruelty. Nonetheless, she’s found a way to “talk about it” without saying anything truly specific—cloaking her pain in such arcane lyrics as, “Don’t fuckin’ call me a fighter, don’t fuckin’ call me a joke/You have no fuckin’ idea, trust me, you’ll never know.” But we can sense the agony she’s endured in evocative descriptions like, “The years keep on draggin’, I’m at the end of my rope/The noose gets tighter and tighter, I’m tastin’ blood in my throat.” Both of these lyrical sets appear on “Fine Line,” one of the two singles Kesha has opted to unleash in preparation for the May 19th release date of Gag Order. With its album cover featuring Kesha being suffocated by the presence of a plastic bag over her head (as Katy Perry—also circuitously involved in Kesha’s case—once asked, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” The answer for Kesha is clearly an emphatic yes).

    Along with “Fine Line,” Kesha has also provided us with “Eat the Acid,” the first track she started to write for this record. One that she’s forewarned listeners about in terms of it not being the “happy, upbeat” music she’s generally known for (e.g., the legendary “Tik Tok”). This being part of why she’s nervous about the reception of the album, exposing herself emotionally in a way that she never has before. And at least some of the reason she’s long been afraid to is because of a quote she has in her mind that goes, “There’s nothing more unattractive than an angry woman.” Whether she made the quote up in her head thanks to living in a misogynistic society for so long or not, Kesha elaborated to Nylon, “Whenever an ugly emotion would announce itself, I would silence it. Dance it away, drink it away, shop it away, fuck it away, or just shut up and vibrate violently on the inside. Anger, sadness, frustration—whatever it was, that’s not what I was here for. It was a burden to be anything but fun and grateful. Which I am. Thus the internal battle rages.”

    But for the first time, we can’t hear that battle so palpably as we did on an album like Rainbow, where Kesha bared her soul for the first time on tracks like “Praying” and “Rainbow,” but also still felt obliged to mitigate her pain with bangers such as “Woman” and “Learn to Let Go.” Gag Order promises to be much more emotionally no holds barred. That much is made clear by the eerie, surreal tones of “Eat the Acid,” a song inspired by Pebe Sebert, Kesha’s mother, warning her daughter at an early age never to take acid, because she would see things that couldn’t be unseen (which is probably why the song should be called “Don’t Eat the Acid,” to be slightly clearer).

    As it turned out, becoming part of the music industry would have a similar effect, but to this day, Kesha has still never actually done acid (she assures). Even so, she repurposes her mother’s warning into the ominous chant that weaves its way in and out of the song: “You don’t wanna be changed like it changed me.” For Kesha’s mother, that phrase might have been about a particular drug, but for Kesha, it’s clearly about the abuse she’s endured from her oppressor, continuing to work freely as a producer and getting his songs on the top of the charts like he never did anything wrong (and yes, someone like Kim Petras is complicit in normalizing Dr. Luke’s “inculpability”). Regardless of Gag Order being the last record Kesha is contractually obligated to fulfill for Dr. Luke’s label, Kemosabe, she will unfortunately be forever linked to him. But with this coup de grâce, she’s not going quietly or gently into that good night. She’s speaking up about her pain without any “danceable ditty” veneers or posturing as a “party girl character.”

    That much is made evident by the visualizer that accompanies “Eat the Acid.” Opening on a close-up shot of Kesha’s makeup-free face, a barrage of hands proceeds to “attack” her, with fingers entering her mouth as she lies practically frozen in something like a state of resigned paralysis. It seems to be an undeniable metaphor for what she’s gone through in the almost decade since her legal battle with Dr. Luke began. And yet, thanks to her “epiphany” moment in the early hours of the morning during the summer of 2020, Kesha has realized, per her lyrics, “I searched for answers all my life/Dead in the dark, I saw a light/I am the one that I’ve been fighting the whole time/Hate has no place in the divine.” In which case, perhaps she’s no longer hoping that Dr. Luke is somewhere “praying,” at last fully absorbing a Kabbalist message that Madonna once summed up by saying, “It’s the hardest thing in the world to do. I mean, can you imagine forgiving people that, you know, fuck you over, for lack of a better word?”

    Kesha has been imagining and alluding to that kind of forgiveness since Rainbow, but it appears to have come to its full fruition in “Eat the Acid.” For, despite all she’s been through, Kesha can still declare, “…the universe is magic/Just open up your eyes, the signs are waiting.”

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link