BeatRoute Magazine ON Edition - March 2020

KESHA’S
RECLAMATION OF JOY
In late January, the day before the
release of her fourth full-length album,
High Road, I’m on the phone with
Kesha telling her about my bad father.
I didn’t intend on it. It sort of spilled
out. High Road includes a ballad called
“Father Daughter Dance,” a track I took to
immediately. The song, about Kesha never
knowing her father, opens with “Oh, I wish
my heart wasn’t broken from the start / I
never stood a chance.” I surprised myself
by crying to those first lines. Because of
my soft Scorpio heart, I tell Kesha this. I
tell her all about it.
“Oh my goodness, I have chills,” she
says slowly.
I’ve written about the estranged
relationship I have with my father before.
By being so public about a private pain,
it’s too often a vain pursuit of mine to seek
out a loose camaraderie. Maybe I’m not
so alone. Maybe someone in my small
corner of the Internet will relate and tell
me that we’ll be okay. Kesha echoes this
thought back to me with far more precise
articulation.
“I really never intended on talking about
that side of my life publicly just because it
kind of seemed off limits.” But she pushed
herself to examine why she felt compelled
to—for such an honest person—leave
this portion of her life untouched. “It was
nothing I ever thought I would discuss
publicly, especially in the form of a song.
To hear somebody say that they relate to
[the song] is why I put it out, even though
it makes me incredibly uncomfortable and
feel emotions that I haven't even quite
worked out yet.”
For more than a decade, Kesha has
given us permission to feel but also to
have a really good fucking time. The pop
star, formerly Ke$ha, defined the 2010s
with her vivacious, youthful, and trashy
songs like “TiK ToK,” which spent nine
weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot
100, and became one of the best selling
digital singles of all time, collecting over
$25 million in sales. Her debut record,
2010’s Animal, was a revelatory, partypraising,
unpretentious pop record. And
despite profiles at the time that attempted
to reduce her work to superficial club
bangers, Kesha spoke assuredly about
her future as a pop singer with enduring
talent.
It feels foreign now to tap into that
particular category of sizzling, temporary
fun. This concept of fun seems restricted
to a certain age range; that when you
age out and leave your early 20s or begin
“adulting,” that fun is lost to that moment
of time.
And this is what Kesha, now 33, is
trying to do still for herself: reclaim a
familiar, but more honest, joy that’s
entirely on her own terms.
High Road is Kesha fully formed. It
takes all the best parts of her career and
firmly places them in her own hands,
moulding a fun, thoughtful, prickly and
sweet record. Kesha executive produced
it — a task she enthusiastically took to.
“I like being able to control the narrative
of what this record is because it will live
far beyond my lifespan,” she explains.
“I wanted to represent myself in a really
honest, authentic way.”
High Road runs through pop, hip-hop,
and country. It even finds Kesha rapping
again. All emphasize her I-don’t-give-ashit
attitude (so enviously formed on the
biting “Honey”) and her propensity to fuck
all the way off into whatever experience
she’s in. Both Sturgill Simpson and Beach
Boys legend Brian Wilson join her on
“Resentment;” cruisemate and legend
herself Big Freedia features on the single
“Raising Hell.”
On “Shadow,” Kesha’s exultation is
more a deft proclamation as she sings,
“I’m so happy and you hate that, I love
love, I love life” and “get your shadow
out of my sunshine.” Here, she sounds
liberated. I asked Kesha how she
managed to find happiness. It’s a daunting
task for an everyday person, but for a pop
star? It seems mountainous.
“To maintain your sense of self and,
at the same time, entertain and provide
people with what they want — I feel like
I've earned my happiness.
“I put a lot of work into reclaiming my
voice, reclaiming the right to be happy and
joyful. I have no reason to be ashamed or
to shy away from talking about going out
and having a wild party night or having an
amazing sex life. These are all things that
are realistic in my life and part of living as
a human being.”
It invites a moment of pause, and an
opportunity to investigate how we treat
women who have been generous with
us by publicly coming forward with the
most difficult moments of their life. Should
that trauma remain integral to their art or
person and define them going forward? At
what point do we say, yes, you deserve to
be happy again in whatever way that takes
shape?
It should go without saying that Kesha
deserves to feel joy. That for everything
the pop star has sung about or gone
through in the most public way imaginable,
at the end of the day, she has more than
earned to feel normal and content with
her life.
“When people see me for who I really
am, I think that's one of the things that
guide me,” she says. STAR
By SARAH MACDONALD
8 BEATROUTE MARCH 2020