Kesha's interview for The Guardian!

[Chris Morlock 44,751]

I’ve never forgotten the first time I saw Kesha. It was at T in the Park 2011, an otherwise unmemorable weekend festival in Scotland. During her main-stage performance, the woman then known as Ke$ha told the crowd that she had one pressing question. “Is there,” she said, prolonging the anticipation, “enough glitter on my titties?” The noisy consensus was no, there was not, so her accomplices doused her in a can of lager and an explosion of gold that left her looking like the daughter of C-3PO and Dolly Parton.

These gleeful exploits defined Kesha Rose Sebert as a pop star for a while. She followed her defiantly trashy 2010 debut, Animal, with the equally riotous Warrior in 2012, becoming a trailblazer for hedonistic pop. Then she disappeared. In 2016, a new image emerged: Kesha wearing a white suit, sobbing in court as she tried to escape her contract with the producer Dr Luke (AKA Lukasz Gottwald), whom she accused of sexual and emotional abuse including date rape and bullying that led to her developing an eating disorder. He denied the allegations. Her case was dismissed. While she could pick new collaborators, she still had to record for his label, an imprint of Sony, and he countersued for defamation.

Kesha’s third album, 2017’s Rainbow, arrived during her legal struggles. While she couldn’t sing about her alleged strife, she made her stance plain: “When I’m finished, they won’t even know your name,” she belted on Praying. The rockier, more personal album earned her the best reviews of her career. “I was not used to having nice press,” Kesha says with a small, stunned laugh. “It was shocking, and also at a time where I so needed kindness.”

But the validation left her feeling uneasy. “I don’t feel as if I’m beholden to be a tragedy just because I’ve gone through something that was tragic,” she says. “That’s really important for people to know – you do not have to be defined by something that was done to you.”

It is early October. Kesha, now 32 and newly brunette, has just debuted her new album, High Road, at a glitzy playback for the media. A few downbeat songs aside, her new music revitalises her rowdy trademark sound – in the way that Tina Turner and Rihanna did after rejecting their own victim narratives. “After Praying, people thought I’d always take the high road,” she tells us, handing out tequila. “And this song is about getting super fucking high.”

 

 

read the full interview in the link below:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/nov/08/kesha-the-worlds-going-to-burn-up-i-might-as-well-have-a-good-time