The best thing about Kesha’s big comeback is where she’s headed next
Nashville, perhaps?
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Chris Richards.
Kesha’s back. (That’s good.)
But her lyrics read like a slush pile of rebound tropes. (That’s bad.)
Her voice still sounds stretchy like spandex. (Terrific.)
And she seems to be steering it into new places. (Even better.)
Where, exactly?
Any destination beats the courtroom purgatory where Kesha Rose Sebert has spent the past few years of her career.
The scandal
In 2014, she filed a lawsuit against her producer and label boss, Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, claiming that he had “sexually, physically, verbally and emotionally abused” her, and since then, legal defeats have prevented her from releasing music outside her deals with him.
With her career in a holding pattern after her 2012 album, “Warrior,” starrier vocalists snapped up Kesha’s contributions and ran — Lady Gaga with the freak-flag felicity, Katy Perry with the affirmative uplift, Miley Cyrus with the rap-curious hedonism.
Her new album
All of that gives “Rainbow” an impossible amount of work to do, but Kesha dives right in, pushing her melodies in the direction of catharsis, even when lyrical cliches block the rush. And they do, over and over again.
“Nothing’s gonna stop me now.” “I can breathe again.” “Live and learn.” “The best is yet to come.”
All meaningless phrases that undermine her attempts at unburdening her heart.
- “Praying,” a piano ballad that addresses her struggles most directly, still sounds like the stuff of Kelly Clarkson.
- The album’s title track pantomimes the band Fun.
- “Boogie Feet,” a collaboration with Eagles of Death Metal, doesn’t replicate the electro-punk of Kathleen Hanna’s Le Tigre so much as map its genome.
Kesha, a future country singer?
Kesha is far more compelling when she borrows from country music — a genre in which imitation feels less egregious because everyone always appears to be tubing down the cool river of tradition.
- “Hunt You Down,” Kesha delivers a few tongue-in-cheek threats of bodily harm over a vintage click-clack beat, making a smart nod to Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart.”
- During the staccato refrain of “Learn to Let Go,” it’s obvious that Kesha has been listening to country’s best new syncretist, Maren Morris.
- She sounds most like a country singer when she’s singing a bona-fide country song: “Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle To You),” a Dolly Parton single from 1980 co-written by Kesha’s mother, Pebe Sebert. Here, in 2017, Parton actually materializes during the second verse, and hearing her trembling voice alongside Kesha’s yowl serves as a helpful reminder about how atypical voices can sometimes become legendary voices.
This is an artist who has lost so much but whose voice still very much belongs to her.
And in country music, nothing communicates human truth more effectively than one-of-a-kind vowel torquing.
