The Very Human Return of Kesha

To use the language likely heard in music-industry boardrooms circa 2010, around the time of the great female pop-superstar boom, Kesha once benefitted from strong market differentiation. She wasn’t the cryptic alien provocateur Lady Gaga; she wasn’t the coy Betty Boop update Katy Perry; she wasn’t the unflappable fashion assassin Rihanna. She was the glorious, superheroic epitome of a very familiar type—the party girl. In neon face paint and with a dollar sign in her name, she squealed about brushing her teeth with booze and sleeping with the heirs to Mick Jagger. She was fun: the brand.

But this was, in a way, just a different flavor of the same product on offer elsewhere. Kesha’s music was powered by the backbeat of Dr. Luke,serving asa rallying cry for misfits and the marginalized. She sassily bit back at male creeps (“Gonna smack him if he getting too drunk”), casually preached self-acceptance (“We R Who We R”), and insisted that girls could have as much a good time as guys without being called sluts. In their way, the likes of Gaga and Perry did something similar—baby, you were born this way; baby, you’re a firework.