I am an avid music fan and I have been since elementary school. It took me a few years, but for many years now, I have been a proud fan of quality music. Music with substance, talent, and you know, created by driven musicians.
The only time I listen to the radio is on Saturday’s when Ira Glass takes over NPR with This American Life. I am uncertain, but convinced MTV ceased music videos and replaced them with Guidos and teen moms. My exposure to music that I do not love is very minimal.
I listen to real music, with instruments, thoughtful lyrics, and actual talent. My record collection is the anti-radio or pretty damn close to it.
Popular music is cheap, it’s a concept created by a fat man in an expensive suit. It’s overly catchy, it’s constructed by anyone other than the “singer”. It’s sexy, easy, and uses dancing as a distraction. The only requirement? Slight talent and the ability to be a puppet. Have a bangin’ body? Willing to sell it? You can be a pop star! It’s a formula.
Take a glittery alcoholic throw in a dollar sign mix in a little sex appeal and blend it with excess auto tune and glitter, voila! KE$HA is born.
The track “Tik Tok” launched Ke$ha into extreme fame. It’s loud, in your face, and hilariously bad. From the “brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack” to rhyming Mic Jagger with swagger. These are hardly lyrics. They are poorly written jokes.
The best part? Ke$ha is in on the joke. If she weren’t, her career wouldn’t be as successful. She “created” a new style of singing. It’s not singing exactly, but rather a hybrid of rapping and whining. She sounds (and probably is) perpetually under the influence. Her songs, vocal stylings, and overall demeanor, are what sells her as a product. She’s smart. She understands that she isn’t making serious music. That’s precisely why, she’s a serious artist.
It wasn’t by choice that I started listening to Ke$ha. On bad nights after the bars, my friends would say, “I feel like Ke$ha.” Instantly Animal was in the cd player, they were screaming, and I was embarrassed. Eventually I started recognizing the harmonies and soon enough, I was singing along. At first it felt shameful, but after a few listens, I knew I was a love sick crackhead.
When Ke$ha first emerged, I was an avid hater. Even as a “fan”, I still cannot put my finger on exactly what makes her so goddamn irresistible. Alone, speeding down the dark highways, I find myself slipping Animal into the cd player. I stop feeling dirty as the record wears on and through the hit songs.
Underneath the glitter, the drugs, and the ignorant lyrics, there’s a, dare I say it? Musician? Because there is. “Backstabber” is a heartfelt jam about bitchy backstabbing girls. It’s not in the typical Ke$ha styling either. She sounds like a female singing sensation. Rather than the bullshit singer she is now. The lyrics are simple, but golly, the girl has some pipes on her.
Will Ke$ha ever get over this phase and make music for the masses rather than the teenager alcoholics? Who knows. But what I do know is, “We R Who We R” is just as good, if not better than “Tik Tok”.
The line, “I’m so sick of being so serious / it’s making me delirious” explains it all. Ke$ha just wants to have fun and so do I. Don’t you? No? Okay, well we are who we are.
I am not ashamed.
This article could, seriously, be written by me, that’s how much I can identify with Ãt. While I never actually hated mainstream pop music (I got a feeling from your article that you did to some extent?), I still didn’t mind about it. For one simple reason: it just never was anywhere good enough to gain my attention, and probably even keep it for a while.
That is, until I came to know Kesha. You’re right when you say it’s hard to put the finger on why you like her. I, for myself, have come to the explanation that the reasons for my obsession with her is an equal mixture of her (admirable) attitude and style and her singer and songwriter qualities. Which, by the way (do you know them?) show much better on some of her unreleased songs. If you DON’T know them, you seriously have to look them up on Youtube. She has written and recorded hundreds of songs, literally.
Last but not least, thank you for the article. I enjoyed reading, I share your guilty pleasure.