Rising star Ke$ha stays down to earth
Pop star loves ‘being kind of scummy’
Becoming one of pop’s top-selling acts over the past two years hasn’t changed Ke$ha much — the girl who got famous by celebrating the trashy life is still revelling in it.
On her new album, she sings fondly of warm Budweiser and gives a thumbsdown to Champagne. One track is about sex with a ghost. She drinks bottom-shelf Taaka vodka.
And before a recent photo shoot, Ke$ha let out a massive belch that sent her busy prep team into an awkward silence.
“I still love having really terrible house parties,” said a relaxed and reflective Ke$ha during a recent interview. “I still don’t live my life with my happiness being dependent on name brands or how much things cost or some sort of VIP club ... I still love being kind of scummy, to be honest.”
Her Warrior, released this week, flaunts the same uncouth attitude that propelled her debut Animal and EP Cannibal up the charts.
But while Ke$ha isn’t courting respect, she’s getting it — and from an elite group in the music industry. Warrior features an expansion of collaborators beyond musical overseer Dr. Luke, the hitmaker who discovered and signed Ke$ha when she was 18. Among those on the album are Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Iggy Pop, Nate Ruess of fun., Patrick Carney of the Black Keys and Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips.
Ke$ha said she pushed herself to put her “heart on the line” by reaching out to the musicians she admired.
Ke$ha says she “stalked” Iggy Pop “because I’m obsessed,” but the other musical partnerships came through mutual friends.
“It was nice to know that people that I really love wanted to collaborate. Because I feel like when you collaborate with somebody, there has to be some element of mutual respect,” she said.
Ke$ha co-wrote five songs for Warrior with her mother, Pebe Sebert, a singer-songwriter from Tennessee who penned Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You, a hit for Dolly Parton in 1980. She says she learned about songwriting by sneaking into her mother’s sessions as a child.
The album features more guitar than her previous efforts, with her punk and hard rock influences heard on Gold Trans Am and Dirty Love, the collaboration where Iggy Pop gleefully name-checks Rick Santorum. It also features less Auto-Tune.
“We wanted to tone it down on the gimmicky, cutting stuff up, Auto-Tune stuff,” said Dr. Luke, credited as executive producer. “I signed her because the first stuff I heard her with was just acoustic guitar and her voice ... When you hear her on a song, you know it’s her right away.”