Ke$ha's using her 'Animal' instincts
| Music Review |
Danielle Tepper
| |
| |
| |
|
Kesha Rose Sebert, born March 1, 1987, has been striving to make a name for herself in music way before she started brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack. Now known as the stylized Ke$ha (pronounced KESH-ah), this 22-year-old has become every American party girl’s favorite new artist.
She began her career in 2005 by working hard and handing out demos, but she didn’t achieve her first real breakthrough until 2009, when her vocals were featured in Flo-Rida’s smash hit “Right Round.”
Her own single, “Tik Tok”, hit radio waves in August of 2009, and reached number one in five countries. It quickly became the anthem for young females associated with going out, getting drunk, and loving every minute. It has had TV placements in Project Runway promo spots, Melrose Place and So You Think You Can Dance.
Her album, “Animal”, debuted at number one in the U.S. upon its Jan. 5, 2010 release. The singer/songwriter’s album was executive produced by Dr. Luke (Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, and Avril Lavigne) and includes collaborations with producers Max Martin and Benny Blanco.
Ke$ha’s website [http://www.keshasparty.com] boasts the story of how she went on an adventure to try to persuade Prince to produce her first album: “She found out his address and drove to his Beverly Hills home, where she paid the gardener five dollars to let her squeeze herself under his front gate. Then she hiked up the driveway (which was lined in purple velvet), let herself in through an unlocked side door, and rode the mirrored elevator up to the third floor where the Purple One himself was jamming with his band. ‘It was kind of awkward,’ she recalls, ‘but who cares, right? So I sat on one of the purple thrones in the room until he noticed me, which he finally did. He was like, ‘How the hell did you get in here?’” she says with a laugh. ‘His security kicked me out, but not before I left him my demo CD wrapped in a giant purple bow.’”
Prince never contacted her, but the experience says it all about Ke$ha’s determination to break into the industry. “I’ve always known I wanted to be a performer,” she says. “There’s a video of me at age five, naked and covered in body paint, saying, ‘I’m going to be a rock star and there’s no way anyone is going to stop me!’ It’s my calling. If I don’t go for it, I’m going to feel like a tool when I’m 50.” Her drive and resolve is what has helped her climb her way into the industry.
Ke$ha learned the tricks of the music trade from her mother, Pebe Sebert, who raised her as a single parent. Pebe would bring Ke$ha to performances in L.A., and later encouraged her daughter to sing, while also teaching her how to write songs. “One of my first memories is my mom telling me, ‘If you want something, just take it,’” the singer says. The family (which also included Ke$ha’s two older brothers, Lagan and Louis) struggled financially for years, and had to resort to welfare and food stamps.
After they moved back to Pebe’s native Nashville, Ke$ha spent a lot of time in recording studios when she wasn’t attending classes in a Tennessee countryside music school.
Ke$ha quit high school at 17 to return to L.A. to pursue music full-time. She left behind the path she had been on to study psychology at Columbia, a choice she says was “crazy,” but obviously paid off.
That was when she met Dr. Luke and got the shot she had been waiting for. “Right Round” soared to number one following its February release in 2009, selling more than 636,000 downloads its first week out, and shattering the all-time one-week digital single sales record. She also co-wrote The Veronicas' single, "This Love" with Toby Gad, sang background vocals for Britney Spears' song "Lace and Leather,” and appeared in the video for Katy Perry's single, "I Kissed a Girl." Kesha later supported Calvin Harris on tour in the UK and toured with Mickey Avalon in the US. She performed at Madison Square Garden on December 11, 2009 for the Z100 Jingle Ball. She has been announced as one of the acts for the 2010 revival of Lilith Fair and also presented at the 52nd Grammy Awards with Justin Bieber.
Animal received mixed reviews from critics, and sold 152,000 copies in its first U.S. week. It was seven years in the making; Ke$ha had accumulated over 200 songs, with 14 making the final cut.
It has been described as “an edgy collection of hard-hitting electro-pop songs, made all the more irresistible by their high-octane punk energy and Ke$ha’s irreverent lyrics and attitude.” Ke$ha herself says, “I want my music to be fun, unapologetic, rowdy, quirky, humorous, and interesting, but with substance behind it. I’m an emotional person underneath all my fronting. I want people to listen to it and feel like they can relate.”
Most of the tracks are based on Ke$ha’s actual life experiences; for example, “Party at a Rich Dude’s House” is about the time Ke$ha threw up in a closet during a party at Paris Hilton’s pad, “Backstabber” is about a friend she used to have who tried to secretly bring her down, and “Kiss N Tell” relates to when she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her with a famous pop starlet.
In actuality, Ke$ha isn’t all about the constant party scene. The title track on the album, which emulates artists like Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire, is the direction she would like to pursue for her next CD.
Above all that, Ke$ha told the Herald Sun that “whether people like me or not, I just don’t care.” She also stated that she was on a “one-woman war against pretension” and that she felt people cared too much about how they appeared.
On her party girl image and fashion sense, she chalks it up to comfort with a “garbage-chic” flair. She doesn’t mind being compared to artists such as Lady Gaga, because they are successful. “I’ll take that,” she says.
She’s not looking to be a new role model either. “I do think it’s an important thing that happiness and the amount of money you have are mixed. There’s absolutely no correlation, because the happiest times of my entire life have been when I didn’t have $2.”
She credits the dollar sign in her name to those broke days. She’s simply being ironic, because she doesn’t place an emphasis on earning money. She has a dollar sign tattooed on her hand for the same reason.
The idea came about after she didn’t receive a dime for her part in “Right Round” because she was never credited. She’s not bitter about that, however.
“When I first heard my voice on ‘Right Round’ on the radio, I started screaming and crying. I may seem kind of crazy, but behind it all I have my s**t together. I’m working really hard to make this happen and it’s nice to see that hard work pay off. I mean, three years ago I was stealing canned vegetables from the dollar store to survive. Now … to be able to take my mom out to dinner is the best feeling in the world.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Track Listings:
Songs to download or ignore, plus sample lyrics.
1. “Your Love Is My Drug”: Download? YES Lyrics: “Won’t listen to any advice / Momma’s tellin me I should think twice / but look into my own devices, I’m addicted, it’s a crisis / my friends think I’ve gone crazy / my judgments gettin kinda hazy / my esteem is gonna be affected if I keep it up like a love sick crack head.”
2. “Tik Tok”: Download? YES Lyrics: “Don't stop, make it pop / DJ, blow my speakers up / tonight, Im'ma fight / til we see the sunlight / TiK ToK, on the clock / but the party don't stop, no / woah-oh oh oh.”
3. “Take It Off”: Download? YES Lyrics: “There's a place downtown / where the freaks all come around / it's a hole in the wall / it's a dirty free for all.”
4. “Kiss N Tell”: Download? YES Lyrics: “I never thought that you would be the one / acting like a slut when I was gone / maybe you shouldn't / kiss 'n' tell. / You really should've kept it in your pants / I’m hearing dirty stories from your friends / maybe you shouldn't / kiss 'n' tell.”
5. “Stephen”: Download? NO Lyrics: “'Cause you’re my object of affection / my drug of choice / my sick obsession / I want to keep you as my pet to play with / and hide under my bed forever.”
6. “Blah Blah Blah”: Download? NO Lyrics: “I don’t really care where you live at / just turn around boy and let me hit that / don't be a little bitch with your chit-chat / just show me where your d***'s at.”
7. “Hungover”: Download? YES Lyrics: “Now the party's over / and everybody’s gone / I'm left here with myself and I wonder what went wrong / and now my heart is broken / like the bottles on the floor / does it really matter?”
8. “Party At A Rich Dude’s House”: Download? NO Lyrics: “I wake up in the front yard, we don't care / wine stain on the sofa, we don't care / I threw up in the closet and I don't care / ‘cause the sun is coming up / and oh my god I think I'm still f***ed up.”
9. “Backstabber”: Download? NO Lyrics: “Girl, you’re such a backstabber, / run your mouth more than anyone I've ever known / and everybody knows it (everybody knows it).”
10. “Blind”: Download? YES Lyrics: “I'm sick and tired of the mess you made me / never gonna catch me cry / oh whoa whoa / you must be blind if you can't see / you'll miss me til the day you die.”
11. “Dinosaur”: Download? NO Lyrics: “At first we thought that it was kind of ill when / we saw that you were like a billion / and still out tryin' to make a killin' / get back to the museum.”
12. “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”: Download? YES Lyrics: “I’m dancing with tears in my eyes / just fighting to get through the night / I'm losing it / with every move I die / I'm faded, I'm broken inside / I've wasted the love of my life / I'm losing it / with every move I die.”
13. “Boots and Boys”: Download? NO Lyrics: “I'm keeping quite the colletion / take nothing less than perfection / cowboy boots, cowboy boys / mmhmm oh, the joy.”
14. “Animal”: Download? YES Lyrics: “This is our last chance / give me your hands / 'cause our world is spinning at the speed of light / the night is fading, heart is racing / now, just come and love me like we're gonna die.”
Be the first to comment on this story