Eat The Acid & Fine Line by Kesha | Song Review
Kesha’s lead singles off her forthcoming album Gag Order dive deep into the insecurities of the singer’s mind.
I have thoroughly enjoyed Kesha’s output since her comeback with 2017’s Rainbow. After a long legal battle to free herself from Dr. Luke, her output feels much more authentic and playful in way that I found extremely refreshing. I loved her mix of folk, pop, electronic, and country elements on her last album High Road. It appears the pandemic and cancellation of her tour around her prior album was a catalyst for some of her internal struggles that she discussed with Nylon:
“I’ve had the life I always silently prayed for. But after my last album was released right before the pandemic hit, I went into quarantine feeling very lost. There was no tour, so the album that I had just made kind of felt like it hit a wall as soon as it entered the world… My brain didn’t have the constant chaos to distract my thoughts. They circled like great whites around my body. I kept dodging the feelings that my life had no purpose and my brain could not function. What am I doing, why am I here? I know I’m wildly blessed and privileged, so why am I so sad and scared? What the f*ck is wrong with me?”
It would be during this time period that Kesha would have an epiphany that would start the process of writing this new album.
The first song Kesha wrote for this album is “Eat the Acid”. She told Nylon the following about the inspiration for the track:
“It was terrifying and electric. I woke up the morning after this experience and wrote the first song for this album, the seed and catalyst for the whole project, called ‘Eat the Acid.’ My mom warned me at a very young age to not take acid. She told me how she had taken some as a teen and it had shown her so much… too much. I made it a point to never, ever touch it. I still haven’t. I didn’t want to see it all. I wanted to live blissfully unaware and happy. I want to be a house cat.”
The song has this desolate feeling through its use of a barren sounding synth line, acoustic guitar, and the occasional effects used on Kesha’s vocals. It feels like being trapped in a luminal space. Like she discussed in her Nylon interview, she uses the metaphor of being flooded by knowledge when under LSD to play off her new enlightenment around herself, “You said don’t ever eat the acid/ If you don’t wanna to be changed like it changed me/ You said all the edges got so jagged now everything you saw then can’t be unseen/ Last night I saw it all/ Last night I talked to God”. I have grown to love this song more and more with each listen.
The second release she teased is “Fine Line”. She goes in a more amorphous direction with the synth and keys on this track. This track releases some of this internal rage that has been quietly seething inside Kesha. You feel this by the song’s second chorus as the backing vocal screams, “I’m sick of walking that fine line/ Fine line between surviving and living/ And god some things never should be forgiven/ Guess what I’m sick of pretending for you.” It feels quite cathartic as Kesha casts off that energy surrounding her prior history of abuse, lawsuits, pain, and healing. The final lines really put perspective on the anger she has around everyone’s drive for her “brand”, “There’s a Fine line between what’s entertaining/ and what’s just exploiting the pain/ But hey look at all the money we made off me.”
This project seems extremely raw and transparent around Kesha’s struggles with anger, depression, and anxieties. Both of these songs are very stark sonically. They aren’t your normal radio pop bangers that earlier Kesha albums gave us. She said that she wanted to make an album that sounded like what goes on in her mind and I think she’s given two tracks that wonderfully display this. I absolutely love the anxious self-discovery that the lead single “Eat the Acid” displays. I have relistened to his song at least 6 times sense it came out. I also really love how fervent “Fine Line” comes across. Lyrically, it really spoke to me. I am stoked to hear what Kesha has lined up for the album in May 2023.
My overall thoughts: 8.0 out of 10.
