Kesha Sebert has had a complex relationship with the American public and the recording industry at large. She signed her first record deal at 18 years old in 2005 and but we didn’t hear her voice in any tangible way until 2009. Her first major appearance was on Flo Rida’s number one hit “Right Round” where she wasn’t credited in America and according to her got no money from the feature. Shortly afterward, during the EDM phase of music in America, she shattered records and sold millions with the mega hit “Tik Tok”, a number 1 hit that has sold 18 million copies worldwide as of August 2019. She became a huge cultural force for a few years within the American zeitgeist wracking up three number one hits and seven other top tens. This was all when she still stylized her name as “Ke$ha”. Ke$ha guest starred on an episode of Nickelodeon, set my middle school on fire with rumors that she never showered so that the glitter would stick to her skin, and immortalized herself with lyrics like “Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack”. She was a perfect pop star for middle and high schoolers from 2009 to 2013. Ke$ha became a recording artist for Kemosabe records in 2005 when Dr. Luke, an American record producer responsible for major pop hits over the years, signed her after hearing her demo of country ballads and electro pop songs. While she was singing on one of the demos she ran out of lyrics on one of the tracks and started improvising lyrics like “Yeah I’m a white girl from Nashville rapping” over a trip hop beat. Luke stated that her brashness and standout attitude set her apart from the rest of the demos from the hundreds of artists he was listening too. He signed her immediately. Unfortunately, Kesha alleges that Luke sexually assaulted her and caused emotional distress for years while she was signed to him and sued him to get out of her record label contract.
The battle between Kesha and Dr. Luke has been playing out for almost a decade and unfortunately Kesha lost her suit against Dr. Luke and his defamation suit against her is set to take place in July. Her case with Dr. Luke was lost due to it being circumstantial. She received an outpour of industry and fan support while this was going on. Taylor Swift helped Kesha with her legal fees giving her $250,000 and Lady Gaga, another survivor of sexual assault, told attorneys that they needed to be ashamed of themselves for doubting victims when brought in for questioning. Dr. Luke and Lady Gaga have never collaborated but she was a supporter and friend of Kesha during the trial which resulted in text messages between the two that Gaga had to answer in a deposition. Kelly Clarkson and Pink, two women who achieved massive success after working with Dr. Luke, have absolutely nothing nice to say about him and have publicly said they will never work with him again due to him being an unpleasant person and collaborator. Even more tellingly, despite his allegations of defamation, Luke just won a Songwriter of the Year award at the ASCAP awards — he’s written modern hits for Doja Cat, Latto, Nicki Minaj, Kim Petras, Dababy, Young Thug, and Flo Milli. Through all of this, Kesha has been dropping music without his involvement with varying levels of success. She released Rainbow in 2017, High Road in 2020 and now Gag Order in 2023.
Kesha’s music has always been something that I pass over. Her rap is a lot like Fergie’s in that it’s not. She doesn’t have a special flow or cadence and doesn’t find pockets in a song to spit over. It’s not very rhythmic at all. I’ve seen it referred to as “brat rap” and that falls in line with those types of rappers. She’s rhyming over a track and it sounds vaguely like rap but nobody with any real sense would say that Kesha, Fergie, or Lizzo, is their favorite rapper. I found it insufferable even as an eleven year old when I started hearing about who she was and her music on the radio. I completely avoid “TiK ToK” when I can even if I engage in a sing-along when I hear it in public and when I engage it’s mostly to not be seen as a stick in the mud. That’s not to say I didn’t think she was capable, I enjoyed “Praying” when it first came out but it didn’t become a staple in my music files after a few listens. I have “We R Who We R” saved mostly as an ironic look back into the past that serves as a trashy pre-game banger. Gag Order was a step into me looking at Kesha the artist in depth. It was the first album I’ve listened to in full from the singer-songwriter. The single “Eat The Acid” is a trip hop track detailing an experience with LSD and it drew me in with its distorted vocals, ethereal production, and chanting chorus. Kesha said she wrote it after having a spiritual awakening and it sounds like a track you make when that happens. It immediately gripped me and made me interested in the album as a whole.
When I listened to the album during my planning period, “Only Love Can Save Us Now” was a standout track for me. I had to replay three times before I let myself finish the rest of the record. I’m not an expert on Kesha’s sound or music but I knew that it was something special for me when I heard it. The elements of Kesha that are known amongst the general public are all over this record. She opens the track with a glitchy and harsh electro beat that knocks against your skull and the lyric “Tell a bitch I can’t jump this, Evel Knievel” (Evel Knievel attempted seventy-five ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps). It’s not a head banger, instead it’s dissonant and sounds a bit half cooked. There’s a sound like someone smashing one key on a cash register before letting the “cha-ching!” sound pop up and sit on top of the pounding bass. Synths overlay the bass halfway through the first verse with a piercing clang and it all works to charge the song up with a sense of anxiousness and tension. That undercooked beat starts to sound intentional as more and more things come into play that make the track sound busy. That tension in the verses helps her find her place to brat rap over the track about religion and her internal struggles. The song itself sounds like a self reflection on who she’s become and how she’s been changed. She screeches lines like “The Power of Christ compels/ me I’m a demon” and “Keep singing ‘Hallelujah’/ nothing can save us” over this electronic madness and you’re left with an understanding of how she felt writing this. The awareness that right now she is not at her best self or is struggling with adversity and feels alone. Despite her prowess as a singer and songwriter, I can’t recall a time when the public gave her a lot of credit for being talented. Someone was buying all of the music but it almost seemed like people had to hide how much they enjoyed “Timber” or “Die Young” until “Praying” at least from my experience. It seemed like Kesha’s brash attitude and fun centered jams had her labeled as a symbol of debauchery. Most female pop stars go through this but this seemed primarily centered on her party life style rather than just sex imagery. After the EDM wave of 2011-2014, it seemed like between Kesha’s legal struggles and the general distaste of much of that era’s music and aesthetic left her without a solid place to plant her flag again. “Praying”, a great song, didn’t do nearly as well as anything she had done before. Despite maturing, or maybe because of it, nobody seemed as interested in Kesha as they were Ke$ha.
Within the first verse of “Only Love” she says “The bitch I was, she dead, her grave desecrated” which is a gut punch when we understand the battles Kesha has had to face in public and in private since she first stepped into the industry. Those battles have left her defeated and her persona of “Ke$ha”, a name that is a relic of early 2010s gimmicks and irony, was shed to make way for a different Kesha that struggled to find control over her music and life but ultimately felt more authentic to her. The lyric lets us know that while she made efforts to be more true to her, that lack of respect or care from the industry and the public is carried with her. That’s going to leave scars and on this song, Kesha addresses them beautifully.
Throughout the first verse there’s a huge build up in the music that demands to be released and Kesha subverts expectations by transforming the song from a techno pop song into an acoustic guitar sing along with a gospel choir in the background. Most pop singles with choirs always sound…trite. But here, Kesha leads with hand claps and a lead vocal that sounds like she’s actually absorbed and heard these sounds in her life. Whether that’s through childhood or from watching online, she sounds like she understands the impact that the melodies and harmonies can give and how to utilize them. It helps that it still sounds like Contemporary Christian Music rather than Black gospel. Her vowels on the chorus are pronounced weird here too. They’re long and there’s a bit of a drag in the singing. Since she’s such a powerful singer it helps create a pull that drags you into a chorus meant to empower and uplift. That distinctive yodel of hers works on power ballads. The lyrics help define the song from pain into hope. She cries out “Oh Lord/ save me/ Please God/ I need Your love now” in the adlibs of the chorus while chanting that the only thing that’ll save us is love. On paper, it sounds kind of silly and cliché. Kesha here makes it sound like it’s truly the only way out. Lyrical content in music doesn’t always have to reinvent the wheel or sound Shakespearean to be good or effective. A good singer and/or melody can elevate its meaning to something that’s intrinsically understood (see “Call Me” by Aretha Franklin to understand what I’m talking about). The lyrics are simple in a way that CCM and gospel can be where lyric exists as a vessel for melodic choices that help tell the story of the song. Kesha’s premise is an old one and this song doesn’t attempt to subvert that. Through her trials and tribulations she’s found solace in religion and the idea of a love that conquers the struggle. That religious exclamation feels poignant, especially when you trace how humans have needed love either from a higher source or their community in order to grow or be safe. The “us” in the chorus invites us to love each other and accept love from G/god or loved ones.
After the first hook the song jumps back to the rap verses and Kesha continues to dive into her mental state and emotions. The most impactful line here is when she snarls “I’m gettin’ sued because my mom has been tweetin’/ Don’t fuckin’ tell me that I’m dealin’ with reason”. On the song it sounds anthemic, you want to throw your weight behind her because of how profoundly unfair this industry has been to her. She proclaims to be “possessive” or “possessed bitch” and we hear her say “shut up, eat your breakfast”. The latter line brings to mind lines of dialogue in movies or television where a cagey person tells someone to eat their food and stop asking questions. Here, Kesha she could be referring to someone telling her to stop asking questions or poking the bear in the industry. She refuses to bend the knee which goes with the end of the verse stating “I don’t got no shame left/ baby, that’s my freedom” and then it goes back into the chorus that at this point insists that we join in the catharsis of pushing back against anything other than love moving us forward. Her freedom is found in telling her story without regards to how people will judge her or believe her. She understands that her early career has painted her in a light that some might consider to be embarrassing. She takes that narrative back and finds power in it as she repeats the chorus eight times building up to a sense of relief or exhalation. The adlibs become more insistent and she eventually repeats the second half of the second verse on top of the chorus and the song blossoms into catharsis. If you let yourself fall into the music you can find yourself screaming along to the music even louder than Kesha. I found myself screaming “Shut up! Eat your breakfast!” with her and having a visceral reaction to how good it felt. That sense of catharsis was something I was craving from a song for months and didn’t even know it. My only complaint is that I wish the song was longer.
I like that this song doesn’t feel preachy or inaccessible. She’s cussing on the same track as she’s asking for God to help her. There’s handclaps and guitar strumming melded together with a electronic beat. The vocalizing in the chorus juxtaposes nicely with the rap verses. There’s a strong piece of Ke$ha from “Tik Tok” mixed with the Kesha who sang “Praying” here to create a piece of music that encapsulates the themes of the record and exists on its own merits. It’s quickly become a contender for my top songs of 2023 list.
Love it! You really captured why the song works for me
loved this! and yeah, this album is really something special. it walks that fine line between ke$ha and kesha, blending in her most personal songwriting up until this point with heavy production from rick rubin. so, so good.