FEATURE:
She Will Not Be Silenced
The Rebirth, Revelations and Renaissance of Kesha’s Gag Order
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ONE of this year’s most anticipated albums…
PHOTO CREDIT: Vincent Haycock
comes out tomorrow (19th May). We all know Kesha (previously Ke$ha). A brilliant artist who is preparing to release her fifth studio album, her sound has undergone quite a transformation. Early albums such as 2010’s Animal (her debut) and 2012’s Warrior were more synonymous with Auto-Tune and vocoders. Lyrically, she explored ex-lovers, partying and excess. Maybe something genuine from a very young artist, you can feel a real maturation and awakening on her recent material. Letting her natural (and excellent) voice come to the forefront without it being digitised, disguised and distilled, her lyrics have also dug deeper and seem more genuine to where she is now. 2020’s High Road was her previous album. As executive producer, she worked alongside some excellent collaborators to reveal one of her best albums to that point. Whilst there was some kindness and positivity when it came to her addressing her partying past, there was also some reality check – there was danger and a sense of recklessness at times. I am glad that we are about to receive another Kesha album. One reason why Gag Order is such an important album is that this is Kesha speaking freely and personally. If the title refers to legalities and restrictions about what she can say, the album is about death, control, and the battle for truth. Her most intimate and honest album yet, the anxieties she (and so many) experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic all goes into this very stirring and different album. Many won’t recognise the artist we hear in 2023 compared to the one in 2010. I know that is a thirteen-year period, but there is a stark difference in terms of the sound and feel of the albums. I do like Kesha’s earliest work, but here we find an artist reborn and entering a new phase of her career.
I have a particular admiration and respect for Kesha (Kesha Sebert). Her past has been extremely hard and filed with obstacles. She checked into a rehabilitation centre in 2014 and began work on her third studio album, Rainbow. She dropped the ‘Ke$ha’ name for her birthname of ‘Kesha’. In June 2014, Kesha claimed a seat as an expert in the American television singing competition Rising Star, alongside Brad Paisley and Ludacris. In October 2014, Kesha sued producer Dr. Luke for sexual assault and battery, sexual harassment, gender violence, emotional abuse, and violation of California business practices which had occurred over ten years working together. This lawsuit ran for a year before Kesha sought a preliminary injunction to release her from Kemosabe Records. On 19th February, 2016, New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich ruled against this request (I am paraphrasing from Wikipedia). Gag Order seems to be Kesha addressing the past (both recent and longer), but also looking ahead. I want to bring in a couple of recent interviews before round up. The Guardian spoke with Kesha earlier this month. They sub-headlined the interview by saying that this former party girl had been in limbo about speaking out against her former producer, Dr. Luke. A sense of catharsis comes through in her new album:
“In April 2020, months after the release of her fourth album, High Road, Kesha had a “beautiful and terrifying” spiritual awakening. Having spent the early lockdown months paralysed by anxiety and consumed by the weight of both personal and global trauma, she suddenly felt “overwhelmed by so many things I hadn’t taken the time to stop and think about”. One night, after weeks of looking for answers, she started hearing “what some might call God, what some might call your higher consciousness” via a two-hour-long, completely sober encounter she initially mistook for a psychotic break.
“I woke up in the morning and called all my healthcare workers and explained what happened, and they all said: ‘Oh that’s a spiritual awakening, congratulations.’” She shakes her head. “I was like: ‘What the fuck are you talking about? You’re saying what I’ve been doing therapy for, and meditating for, and searching for, was to have an incredibly surreal, terrifying, nearly psychedelic experience?’ They were all, like: ‘Yep, that’s the goal.’”
That night inspired Eat the Acid, the deeply hallucinatory, minor-key lead single from her Rick Rubin-produced fifth album, Gag Order. “I searched for answers all my life / Dead in the dark, I saw the light,” she sings over wheezing synths and a distant bass rumble that eventually breaks like a clap of thunder. It heralds an album quite unlike anything the 36-year-old LA-native, born Kesha Rose Sebert, has released before. “With this album I actually got to get really intimate and expose the sides of myself that I’m not the most proud of,” she says, shuffling for a comfy spot on her bed, her laptop wobbling as she lays down on her side. “The ones that I want to never talk about, that I never want to share with the greater public. The ones that are more scary, and more vulnerable, and more insecure. I share a lot of ugly emotions on this album.”
Having blazed a trail through the pop cosmos in late 2009 via messy, hedonistic banger Tik Tok, all smeared glitter, sexual liberation and talk of brushing her teeth “with a bottle of Jack”, Kesha (or Ke$ha as she was then) was the perfect soundtrack for a disfranchised generation pepped up on post-recession nihilism. Critics hated her while her fiercely loyal fans, or Animals, connected to her outsider spirit, and the hits – all of them made with Pink and Katy Perry producer Dr Luke – kept coming. Then, in 2014, the party stopped: Kesha dropped the dollar sign from her name and checked herself into rehab for an eating disorder. Later that year she filed a lawsuit against Dr Luke (real name Lukasz Gottwald), claiming he had sexually and emotionally abused her over a 10-year period. In 2016, Kesha’s case was dismissed, and Gottwald – who has always denied the allegations – sued for defamation.
Creatively, Kesha was left in limbo. Still signed to Gottwald’s label, Kemosabe Records, an imprint of Sony, she eventually released her third album, the rockier, more inward-looking Rainbow in 2017. Muzzled in interviews for fear of jeopardising her ongoing legal case, she managed to hint at her emotional state on the album’s lead single, Praying. “When I’m finished, they won’t even know your name,” she sings at one point. But Kesha’s early, defining songs were pushed through a default filter that read as “fun and numb”, a sound she felt compelled to return to on 2020’s muddled High Road, with its partial reclamation of her party girl persona.
In stark contrast, the tellingly titled Gag Order – a plain-speaking, minimal record that touches on death, depression, emotional exploitation, control, hope and a battle for the truth – sheds so many layers that only the core remains. “I realised that I, almost to the point of toxic positivity, was trying to really amplify that [playful] side of my personality,” she says, utilising, as she does throughout our interview, the language of therapy and self-help teachings. “I was doing a disservice to the whole of my being. As the woman who wrote Tik Tok and ‘the party don’t start until I walk in’, I didn’t think anyone needed or wanted that side of my psyche. I also realised that there’s an element of people-pleasing in just trying to give people what they want from me.”
Kesha credits the zen-like Rubin for creating an environment where she felt comfortable enough to reveal herself emotionally. “After a decade of feeling like I’d become a caricature of myself in some ways, he was like: ‘I really want to know what’s going on deep inside of you,’” she says. “So he just made this super cosy space where instead of thinking about what other people want, or what other people expect, or what’s going to make other people happy, it was about what truly needs to be excavated from inside of me”.
I am going to finish with an interview from Rolling Stone. With Rick Rubin executive producing alongside Kesha, you have this artist taking control. She also worked closely with a legendary producer who helped bring a new sound and direction to her music. It seemed that there was a distinct turning point for Kesha in terms of her music. Rainbow (2017) was an album where we saw that shift from the party girl and someone living life to the full (which was sometimes unwise), to a human who was realising what risks and damages can occur from those choices:
“At the time, she didn’t think the song would ever see the light of day, but in the end, that track became the genesis of her fifth studio album, Gag Order, out on May 19. The album was produced by Rick Rubin, a fellow Pisces who bonded with Kesha over the spirituality that she’d tapped into while not dropping acid.
“I feel like I’m giving birth to the most intimate thing I’ve ever created,” the singer says, sounding as jittery as a high school student at her first recital. It’s a stark contrast to the Ke$ha of 2012, who cheekily extolled the virtues of the “lady-wang” to Rolling Stone (sample sentence: “My lady-wang is becoming increasingly moist by the minute”). Gone is the bravado, the “fuck it” attitude; Kesha is laying it all bare, and she seems genuinely nervous about the world seeing this side of her. “I really dug into some of my uglier emotions and sides of myself that are less fun,” she adds. “It’s scary being vulnerable. The fact that I have compiled an entire record of these emotions, of anger, of insecurity, of anxiety, of grief, of pain, of regret, all of that is so nerve-racking — but it’s also so healing.”
You probably think you know Kesha by now. Whether it’s Ke$ha, the 22-year-old who boasted about brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack back in 2009, or Kesha at 30, who ostensibly grew up and found herself on 2017’s Rainbow, which came a few years after she checked into a treatment center for mental-health issues and an eating disorder. Thirty-six-year-old Kesha is yet another evolution — which makes sense, because as she says, her twenties were “strange and interesting,” while her thirties have been about self-exploration. “I wrote ‘TiK ToK,’ and ‘the party don’t start ’til I walk in,’ so I almost felt like I was becoming a caricature of this toxic positivity,” she says. “We live in a culture where I feel like we always show our best side. But Rick Rubin created the most beautiful, safe space for me to really dive into these emotions.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Magdalena Wosinska
While Rainbow and its follow-up, 2020’s High Road, feature both introspective songs and tracks perfect for getting amped before going out, Gag Order is a true about-face. There’s not much to dance to here, but there’s plenty to chew on. “Living in My Head,” which Kesha says she wrote in the middle of another panic attack, is a painful listen in the tradition of John Lennon’s “Cold Turkey.” “Every time I listen to ‘Living in My Head’ I just want to curl up in a ball and hide,” she says.
Then there’s “Eat the Acid,” which she and Rubin wrote over Zoom early on in the pandemic, her vocals lagging behind the music like her hero Captain Beefheart yelling the lyrics to Trout Mask Replica through the glass of the recording booth. Rubin chose that take — which she recorded on her phone next to her cats’ litter box — for the album. Although they’d go on to record most of the album in professional studios, Rubin kept a lot of Kesha’s iPhone scratch vocals in the mix. “Rick Rubin has access to the nicest microphones known to mankind,” she says. “But the purity and genuine nature of just recording something with what you are holding in your hand on the fly, in the moment, it just captures the magic that was not re-creatable.”
“Fine Line,” which she’s teased on social media, comes the closest to addressing her current legal predicament, which, of course, is echoed in the title of the album. “I feel as if there has been an implied gag order for a very long time now,” she says. “With my ongoing litigation hanging over my head, I have not been able to speak freely because I know everything I say is scrutinized.” Kesha first filed suit against her producer and label owner Dr. Luke in 2014, alleging an extended period of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and attempting to extricate herself from her contract. Luke, real name Lukasz Gottwald, countersued that same year, vehemently denying all her allegations and claiming that the singer had defamed him. A judge dismissed Kesha’s claims in 2016, largely on the grounds that they were too old, but Luke’s defamation suit continues to this day, despite several appeals. That case is set to go to trial this summer.
Kesha’s anger is palpable in “Fine Line,” in which she rants at “all the doctors and lawyers [who] cut the tongue out of my mouth,” culminating with the line: “But hey, look at all the money we made off me.” It’s a striking statement, given that this reportedly could be the last record in her contract with Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe Records. It’s also a way for her to get a word in edgewise before the trial. (Prior to the interview, RS was instructed not to ask Kesha about the trial since the case is still pending, and her team could not confirm the current status of her contract.)
There’s a lot of fight on this record, with Kesha comparing herself to a demon on more than one track — notably on “Only Love Can Save Us Now,” which kicks off with the most Ke$ha line on the record: “Tell a bitch I can’t jump this Evel Knievel.” It’s also got its share of pain and loss: She wrote “Too Far Gone,” she reveals, after ending her secret engagement to a boyfriend she won’t name, who she says is still a friend.
She says the bittersweet love song “All I Need Is You” is not about her ex, as you might expect, but Mr. Peeps, who almost died in 2022. “I had to go into ninja mode and find medication and learn how to inject him,” she says. “I wrote that song in the middle of him being really sick. It is about loving myself, and it’s also a love song to my highest form of consciousness and to some sort of God. But the seed of that song is about Mr. Peeps, the true love of my life.”
Spirituality has always been a constant in Kesha’s music, even in her wilder Warrior days. But on Gag Order, it’s woven into the fabric of every song. The late Be Here Now author and guru Ram Dass gets a whole interlude (an ex gave her a copy of the book while she was in rehab), Indian philosopher Osho is sampled on “All I Need Is You,” and Oberon Zell, an 80-year-old wizard she met while making her podcast Kesha and the Creepies, appears on the last song, “Happy,” proclaiming: “Sometimes, you think you’re doing the magic, and sometimes you realize the magic is doing you”.
I would recommend people check out Gag Order, and you can pre-order the vinyl ahead of its release in June. If there was a sense of Kesha losing control or having it taken from her in the past, Gag Order sees the Los-Angeles born songwriter…
TAKING it back.