FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Kesha — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Ruben Chamorro

Kesha

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THIS time out…

PHOTO CREDIT: Brendan Walter

for Modern-Day Queens, I am concentrating on the fabulous Kesha. This feature includes the best and most important women in music right now. Kesha released her . (Period) album on 4th July. In many ways, this was a return to the hot mess/fun Kesha that some critics felt was lacking on recent albums. In truth, she wants to keep her music shifting and evolving. . (PERIOD) is very different to her earlier work. I wanted to feature her to shine a light on the album but also get inside some recent interviews. One of the most inspiring women in music, I know so many of her fans look up to her. Kesha Rose Sebert is a huge American artist whose debut album, Animal, was released in 2010. Her debut single, Tik Tok, was released in 2009. That remains her best-known track. I think her most recent three albums are her best. 2023’s Gag Order is hugely impressive and deserves more discussion. 2020’s High Road was an album that splices genres beautifully. Kesha wanted to portray a sense of happiness and freedom through the album. This year, she reflected how that was complicated due to the loneliness she felt at the time. . (PERIOD) may be her finest album yet. I think that it is one that should be heard by everyone. I will end with two reviews of the album. There are some interviews from this year that I want to bring in first. The first interview I am sourcing from was published back in April. Published by PAPER, Kesha and Bob The Drag Queen “connected for a conversation about freedom, songwriting and Snatch Game”. Looking ahead to the release of . (PERIOD), “and in anticipation of the honor she’s set to receive next week from The NYC LGBT Community Center”, there are parts of this terrific interview that I want to start out with:

“Bob: And then what about your album?

Kesha: So, my album, PERIOD, just got announced. The muse for my other albums has been a lot of external factors or things I've been going through, things that were unavoidable to create art about. And to be honest with you, this is my first album where I'm truly free in every way. And not only in all the legal ways, but also I'm really working on healing and feeling free from any residual emotional turmoil that's left in my body. I spent the weekend dancing and trying to move trauma through my body. I'm really trying to embody freedom in every way possible. I'm trying to allow myself to feel what freedom feels like, because it's been almost 20 years for me. And that doesn't just happen in a day. That programming lives inside your mind and your spirit and your body. And we all have ways in which we are or are not free. My perspective and vantage point is obviously my own lived experience.

But freedom, by definition, is the power and the right to act and speak and think as you want to without any restraint. And it's terrifying for me to really embody full freedom, because it's the act of really embodying who you are to the fullest. And to really feel that, it starts with safety. So, that's why creating safe spaces has been my number-one objective, because how can anyone truly feel free if they don't feel safe?

Bob: We've had the misfortune of watching people like you and Britney Spears and Wendy Williams see what the entertainment industry does to women and how it tries — once you start to go toward your own freedom — to have it stripped away. It brought a lot of us together to rally around you and to support you. I told a story on a podcast recently, you've written so many beautiful songs. When people go to your concert they usually cry during “Praying.” But for me it was “Blow.” I don't know what it was. It was the encore performance. So much of your early work was about being free and having fun. Something about seeing you on stage performing “Blow,” and I just heard you do your little laugh and go, “Dance.” And as soon as you said “dance,” I just started crying, which is great. I made it through the whole concert without a single tear until then.

PHOTO CREDIT: Brett Loudermilk

Kesha: That's honestly making me really emotional. The most political act right now is to be happy and to be free and to spread love. And even when all the forces feel like they're against you — to put on that makeup and to put on your glitter and to dance — just demanding to feel your joy. At that point I was years into litigation and had nothing to give. I was so depleted emotionally from my joy and so disconnected from being treated like a human. And I still, in the face of all of that, I was goddamn determined to spread joy even when I had no joy to give. I appreciate you seeing that.

Bob: We all saw it, and it really meant a lot to rally around you and see you up there telling us to have fun, telling us to dance, telling us to cover ourselves in glitter. To put some glitter in your hair, throw on a sequin and a leather jacket and a combat boot, and still hit the club and enjoy yourselves regardless. Because that's truly what the powers that be don't want us to see. They want to believe that they've stripped all your joy away from you.

Kesha: It's like laughing in the face of chaos and turmoil, and finding each other and finding community and finding love and finding a safe place to move your bodies. I really think joy and love is the most political act that we could all embody right now. Because we are in the middle of a chaotic shit storm, it’s like spiritual warfare. And I just think that what you do and what I do, we really are warriors for joy and freedom. It's much more than just putting on a wig or me dancing around. It's not that. It's a very defiant political act to be in your joy and to spread that.

This is my first album where I'm truly free in every way... I'm really trying to embody freedom in every way possible.

What informs and inspires your art today? What are you tapping into?

Bob: I always find joy. Something about humor is so remarkable to me, because people really can laugh despite it all. My mom passed away last year on Mother's Day. It was really, really, really hard. I buried her the next Sunday. And then the Sunday after that, I went to go film The Traitors, this incredibly stressful TV show about deceit and lying and death and murder. But in the midst of all that, somehow I was still able to find joy and laughter because that's what my mom would have wanted.

Kesha: My god, I'm really sorry to hear about your mother. Even the ability for you to go and give that is a gift, and to be able to go and give that gift to others, what a selfless act. I'm just sending you so much love.

PHOTO CREDIT: Brett Loudermilk

Bob: It was crazy, I'm not going to lie, but it actually helped me out a lot. I think it was better for me than sitting at home by myself.

Kesha: That's the beauty of art. I celebrated the release of “YIPPEE-KI-YAY.” and the announcement of PERIOD by teaching others how to write songs, which is the most beautiful part about art. I think escapism is an incredibly important and valuable thing for humans, especially when hard things are happening. To have an outlet to put your grief into, to put your emotions into something that then can help connect you to others.

When I create a song, it makes a moment of my life immortal. At the end of my life, I can go back and listen to my life through all of my songs that I've put out and all the ones that I haven't been able to put out. It's like the book of my life. I really wanted to capture the feeling and the healing of a woman. My gift to this world is my voice, it's like my prayer to the world. I've been so blessed and privileged that many people have gotten to hear my voice. It seems like the rights to one's self-expression and their voice shouldn't be legally allowed to be taken away. But in my case, that's what happened to me for 20 years.

So, I wanted to really capture in song what it sounds like for a woman to regain the rights back to the thing that is her gift to the world. I wanted to capture that entire journey of healing, freedom, reclaiming my joy, falling in love with myself as I am, and I want to give that gift to the world because, like you were just talking about, Bob, it's not always meant to connect you to other people. Art can be a very selfish act when you're creating it; at least it is for me when I write songs. I write songs because I need to get an emotion out of my body, but the alchemy of it is you create this thing and you have the courage and the bravery to put it out for mass judgment, which is a terrifying part of our jobs, but we have the balls to do it.

Through that emotional release for ourselves and that courage and through a fuck ton of judgment and hate, then people get to connect to you and find solace in our shared humanity. We realize that we are not alone, and we are all one, and we all do go through many of the same things. I really wanted to capture reclaiming my freedom. I wanted to capture that in song and I want to give that as a gift to the world, because everybody's going through something. It might not be the same something, but everybody's going through something or has been through something. And for me specifically, after what I've been through, I want people to see that my joy is still my right.

Bob: It's really crazy when you think about how some of your newer fans have not been alive as long as you've been silenced. Some 15-year-old who doesn't have a memory of you before you were going through these legal battles. And especially when you talk about putting your art out there for criticism.

Kesha: That judgment piece is something that I've been working a lot on. To put out art is a fight. You have to want it and you have to fight for that. It's expensive and it takes up your greatest asset, your time. On social media, where everyone judges the shit out of everybody else, from your body to your art to anything else... I'm trying to heal from decades of projected judgments that I've internalized, and it's become my truth. That's what I was trying to dance out of my body this weekend, because that shit gets stored in your body. I realized I haven't danced for fun in years, because people make fun of the way I dance. And it's probably just some 12-year-old in their mom's basement on Twitter, but that becomes my higher power’s voice. That's a problem. So, I'm trying to change any of my own personal judgments into curiosity. It's a really beautiful gift. I was given an exercise and I would challenge the world: when you start feeling judgmental, what if you flip that into curiosity?

Bob: Yeah, that's actually really powerful. I'm not gonna say I'm not judgy. We recognize it in ourselves.

Kesha: I'm judgy as hell.

Bob: Which allows us to see it in others.

Kesha: My inner critic tells me things where your mom or your therapist will be like, "No, that's just your inner critic." Then when you see it on the cover of a magazine or somebody else is writing it on the internet, it is like an externalized inner critic. That’s something that really fucks with your head for me.

Bob: When someone out there vocalizes your worst fear about yourself.

Kesha: Yes.

Bob: Then you can really be like, “I fucking knew it. I should have never released this. I should have never worn that outfit. I should have never danced. I should have never gone to that one show. I knew as soon as I got off stage, I knew the show was shit.” And then this one person on TikTok or Twitter, or this critic in this magazine or this newspaper, confirmed what I knew: that this was shit.

Kesha: The freedom I'm trying to get back every day is being okay with where I am in my journey. Like you said, freedom is not a destination. The desire for freedom is ongoing and the freedom to really embody oneself fully on a world stage takes so much courage. I'm really trying to break through this judgment piece to find true freedom to be able to play and have fun. It’s a political act”.

PHOTO CREDIT: J.N. Silva

I am going to move to an interview from Vogue that came out at the start of this month. Talking about . (PERIOD) and some of its songs, it is clear – as Vogue say – that the party is just getting started. If Kesha has addressed darker themes and more traumatic incidents on albums such as Gag Order, there is a shift in terms of sound and lyric dynamics for . (PERIOD):

“As the album began taking shape, what did you want to say with it?

I wanted it to be the ultimate fuck-you album of all time. I listen to my new record when I need that strength to be my own watchdog. I’m really protective of my time, space, and energy now. Anything that has kept me from feeling free, I’m very cutthroat about that. Anything that is keeping me from being in my fullest potential, it’s gone. Even if it’s an internalized voice that’s keeping me from my true freedom, it’s got to go. I really wanted to make a triumphant soundtrack for those moments. I hope people put it on and love themselves a little more, protect themselves a little stronger, and have their backs a little harder.

Do you think pop artists need to take more risks like that these days?

When I look around to the other girls dominating pop right now, I think we’re doing a pretty goddamn good job. I love that people are so mad about Sabrina [Carpenter] being hot. I’m like, Keep being hot, girl! You’re doing it right! And Charli [XCX] just fully embodying her truest self. I think we’re doing pretty good. I just want to add my flavor. Music is not a competition. In the pop scene and culture that I was raised in, these major labels would try to pit us against each other, and that is complete bullshit. When we come together, that’s where the power is.

Do you think it’s easier to be a pop star nowadays, or is it even more challenging?

As women in culture, it’s not ever going to be easy. We’re up against trying to be pretty but not too pretty. Trying to be funny but not going over the line. Be sexy, but don’t be a slut. Trying to fit into societal standards is a losing game, especially as a woman in pop. So everyone should keep being themselves, and fuck what anybody says.

In your song “Red Flag,” you talk about your attraction to red flags. What are a few of them?

I’ve worked on myself, and I try not to be attracted to red flags. But I have found myself attracted to lots of red flags. The guy with the motorcycle who does not have a place to live? Hot. The guy who goes to the gym three times a day but doesn’t have a job? Hot. You name it, it’s probably hot. But instead of punishing myself for it, this song is a celebration of the fact that I really do have the best dating history—and have a lot of really funny stories.

In “Delusional,” you sing about someone deluding themselves into thinking they can move on and find someone better. But do you think a little delusion in life can be a good thing?

Oh, 100%. Sometimes believing in yourself is completely delusional. When you have big creative ideas as an artist, you feel absolutely out of your mind until they happen. If I had told you a couple of years ago, “I’m going to play Madison Square Garden, and it’s going to be a blend of my spiritual practices and a bunch of pop songs,” you’d be like, “It sounds delusional.” But that’s exactly what the fuck I’m about to do [on my tour]. And it’s very cunt”.

Prior to quoting from two positive reviews for . (PERIOD), there is one more interview I want to include. This one is from FADER. They note how many Pop artists of today are returning to the 2010s and its gonzo sound. Kesha is meeting that and, in the process, releasing . (PERIOD) through her own label (Kesha). Anyone who has not heard her new album really needs to. It is among the best of this year:

“Period arrives almost a year after brat, an album also about freedom and an artist doing whatever the fuck they wanted that manifested itself into a lifestyle and cultural lodestar, extending the possibilities of what a pop record could do and the reach it could have. Artists like Lorde say it has made them more ambitious. Kesha echoes something similar: “Charli’s always been ahead of the curve; it’s been really inspiring,” she says. Kesha’s appearance on Charli’s “Spring Breakers” remix last year reminded her that pop shouldn’t be a competition. “Growing up in this era of music, the people around me would try to compare me to other people. So, I couldn't help but feel that I was in competition with people that I was a fan of, and it was a really confusing place to be.” She brings the point back to her freedom: “But, you know, through my process of gaining my freedom and really looking at my patterns of thinking that keep me from feeling free, I realize that the only competition is with myself.”

The world seems very ready for this reduxed Kesha. At a time when popstars are returning to the gonzo sounds of the 2010s and people are eagerly identifying so-called “recession indicators,” Kesha once again fits squarely in the cultural moment. She is performing with some of the best stats of her career. As of writing, she’s Spotify’s 64th most listened-to artist in the world, a number that’s been climbing all week. She achieved her second-highest days of streaming in mid-June. She’s headlining New York City’s Madison Square Garden for the first time in July.

A successful — here comes the refrain again — free bitch, Kesha’s even exploring the possibility of finally releasing the long-lost Lipsha album with the Flaming Lips. The project, which originated from Wayne Coyne’s early belief in her talent, has become the white whale of Kesha’s fan lore. She’s currently looking into whether she can finally release Lipsha on Kesha Records, “but I’m not sure what I legally can do,” she says.

“I really wanted to stand for joy, and I really wanted to make people dance, and I wanted to be playful and I wanted to be the thing that everyone knows and loves me for, but I wasn’t free. I was really lonely”.

PHOTO CREDIT: J.N. Silva

I want to include some words from two (of the many) positive reviews for . (PERIOD). In their assessment, this is what AllMusic had to say about an album that has also received some more mixed reception. Although Kesha’s work will not appeal to all, I do think that she is producing her best work at the moment. Entering a new phase in her career and sound. I have followed her music since the start. She is someone I will always respect and admire:

“No typo, Kesha's sixth studio album, 2025's ., is literally the period at the end of a sentence, and one that marks a new era of personal and creative freedom for the singer. It's a bold declaration that's been long in the making for Kesha, who, unless you haven't been paying attention, has had a rough decade. Along with her legal battle with producer Dr. Luke and subsequent wrangling with her former labels RCA and Kemosabe Records, she also sought treatment for an eating disorder, spoke openly about dealing with body dysmorphia, and was diagnosed with common variable immunodeficiency disorder (CVID), the latter adding a physical fatigue to her career woes. She addressed many of these issues 2017's Rainbow, 2020's High Road, and 2023's Gag Order -- albums whose titles underscored what she was going through. And while . certainly finds her having worked through past traumas, it is also a convincing fresh start. Literally this is true, as it is her first album released on her own independent Kesha Records. Yet it also feels fun and effervescently inspired. Co-producing with a small trio of collaborators, including NOVA Wav, Pink Slip, and Zhone, Kesha comes off as both a seasoned industry pro and the maverick pop instigator she's always been. She kicks things off in bold fashion with the six-minute "FREEDOM," whose heady blend of atmospheric new age soundscapes and '80s house music grooves sets a clubby, cathartic tone. "I only drink when I'm happy and I'm drunk right now," she repeats on the song, offering a mantra for the album's blend of spiritual liberation with a side of debauchery. More giddy, genre-mashing moments follow, including the bandoneon-accented tango-house jam "JOYRIDE," the twangy hip-hop country of "YIPPEE-KI-YAY," and the sultry disco electro-soul of "TOO HARD." We also get the empowered uplift of "DELUSIONAL," "RED FLAG," and "THE ONE," big rousing anthems that smack you in the face with hooks and a hard-won sense of mature, protective self-love. However, Kesha hasn't lost her taste for hyperpop camp fun as the gleefully horny, tongue-in-cheek "BOY CRAZY" affirms. More than just a conceptual conceit, the all-caps titles speak to the mood of declarative joy Kesha conjures throughout. It's a vibe she underscores on the epic power ballad closer "CATHEDRAL," singing, "I'm summoning my divine.". isn't just a good album, it's a decisively great one, full stop”.

I am going to end with The Guardian’s review of . (PERIOD). Like with the interviews, I am not including the entire thing. I have selected parts of this review I feel are particularly standout and relevant. It is interesting comparing reviews for . (PERIOD) and reading what each reviewer had to say about the album:

“While Rainbow and its immediate follow-ups regularly mined the legal disputes and resulting trauma for lyrical inspiration – a dramatic shift from the screw-you hedonism that powered her big hits in the early 2010s – Period signals a fresh start by, more or less, bringing back the Kesha who boasted about brushing her teeth with Jack Daniel’s and took to the stage accompanied by dancers dressed as giant penises. Only the piano ballad closer Cathedral seems entirely rooted in recent events – “Life was so lethal … I died in the hell so I could start living again”. Elsewhere, the occasional hint of something dark in the author’s past (“I earned the right to be like this”) is drowned out by the sound of Kesha reverting to type in no uncertain terms: “take me to the sex shop”, “bartender pour me up some damn fluid”, “I like chaos, dripping head to toe”, “gimme gimme gimme all the boys”.

And who can blame her? No one wants to be defined by trauma, and she’s doubtless keen to assert that the original Kesha persona was more to do with her than the svengali-like producer who discovered her.

Furthermore, it’s a weirdly timely return. In 2010, Kesha’s hot mess persona made her an outlier, albeit an outlier whose debut single TiK ToK sold 14m digital copies worldwide. The critic Simon Reynolds smartly noted that if the era’s predominant female star Lady Gaga saw her work as high-concept art-pop in a lineage that included David Bowie and Roxy Music, Kesha was more like their glam-era rival Alice Cooper. Fifteen years on, we live in a pop world at least partly defined by Charli xcx’s last album. Perpetually half-cut and lusty, open about her messy failings (“I like the bizarre type, the lowlife … God, I love a hopeless bastard,” she sings of her taste in men on Red Flag), Kesha could make a fair claim to be a godmother of Brat. Certainly, you couldn’t accuse her of jumping on a latter-day trend, just as Period’s diversion into vogue-ish country-pop, Yippee-Ki-Yay, seems less craven than it might. Kesha has done past work in that area – from her 2013 Pitbull collaboration Timber to her duet with Dolly Parton on Rainbow.

Yippee-Ki-Yay’s country-facing sound sits among a buffet of current pop styles: there’s synthy, 80s-leaning pop-rock you could imagine Taylor Swift singing on Delusional and Too Hard, and mid-tempo disco on Love Forever, while the spectre of hyperpop haunts the warp-speed Boy Crazy and Hudson Mohawke turns up glitchy Auto-Tune-heavy electro on Glow. It’s an album clearly intended to re-establish Kesha at the heart of pop, which means there’s no room for the appealing weirdness of her 2023 single Eat the Acid, and it’s only on the closing Cathedral that her voice really shifts into the full-throttle roar she unleashed covering T Rex’s Children of the Revolution at 2022’s Taylor Hawkins tribute concert.

That said, the songs are all really strong, filled with smart little twists and drops, and funny, self-referential lines: “You’re on TikTok / I’m the fucking OG.” You get the sense of the massed ranks of collaborators – including everyone from regular Father John Misty foil Jonathan Wilson to Madison Love, who counts Blackpink and Addison Rae among her songwriting clients – really getting behind her to make Period a success. Kesha, meanwhile, plays the part of Kesha 1.0 to perfection: for all the lurid lyrical excesses, it never feels as if she’s trying too hard. And why would it: she’s returning to a role she originated”.

Someone who is definitely a modern-day queen in my view, Kesha is an artist who has inspired and empowered so many women. Charli xcx among them. . (PERIOD) is her new album and latest chapter. One of music’s most compelling women, I would encourage everyone to follow Kesha and check out her…