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KESHA (with Pitchfork's Cat Zhang)

Published: March 24, 2022, 7:01 a.m.

Assistant Editor at Pitchfork Cat Zhang joins DJ Louie for a deep dive into the career and music of misunderstood, resilient 2010s trash pop queen, Kesha. First, Louie and Cat break down the hip-hop-dance-pop party music of the mid-late aughts- a hedonistic period fueled in part by a desire for escapism during The Great Recession- and discuss artists like Fergie, Gwen Stefani and others who set the stage for the uptempo rap/EDM hybrid that would become Kesha\'s calling card. Next, they lay out Kesha\'s biography, growing up poor with a single mom who wrote country songs for artists like Dolly Parton, her initial connection to superstar producer/songwriter Dr. Luke, what made Luke such a prolific hitmaker in the 2000s, and finally how a chance appearance on the hook of Flo-Rida\'s "Right Round" provided the launching pad for Kesha\'s breakthrough debut album, Animal. Louie and Cat go long on Animal, breaking down it\'s unique, gaudy sonic landscape and Kesha\'s singular perspective as an anti-materialistic, dumpster-diving party animal who proudly flew in the face of respectability on hits like "Tik Tok", "Blah Blah Blah" and "Take It Off", the way the album inverted pop gender politics and drew on far-ranging influences from Daft Punk to the Beastie Boys to Bloghaus, the fine lines Kesha\'s rapping walked in terms of cultural appropriation, and the borderline-experimental ways Kesha and Luke found true heart and personality in the maximalist machinery of modern pop. They then chronicle the contentious creation of Kesha\'s follow-up album, 2012\'s Warrior, and how she and Luke\'s diverging artistic visions presaged greater rifts in their relationship, how the album\'s sole hit "Die Young" was pulled from radio following the school shooting at Sandy Hook, the moment Kesha filed lawsuits against Luke for sexual assault, battery, sexual harassment, and emotional abuse, how those lawsuits derailed her career for five years, her comeback with her radically different third album, 2017\'s critical-darling Rainbow, and how we see Kesha\'s influence on modern pop. Finally, Louie and Cat rank Kesha in the official Pop Pantheon.