Rosemary Cronin feels the magic as she listens to a new album by American singer and songwriter Kesha
I’m not sure if anyone else noticed the tiny white feather fall in front of the screen when the DJ pressed play on Kesha’s new album, Gag Order. I was at a listening party hosted by Dazed, and what felt straight off sermon-like unfolded into even more of an unexpectedly spiritual experience.
The lyric booklets were lined on the benches, like prayer books on pews and we were bathed in red light. Kesha’s former works are not reflective of this reverence; instead she became known for her bubblegummy, brash and bold dance-pop hits like Tik Tok and Blah Blah Blah. But a quick read into her journey through stardom tells us that the ride has been bumpy, fast, furious and full to the brim with massive highs and crashing lows.
Like many women in the music industry, Kesha has been on a rollercoaster, turned back-to-front and upside down; and like a lot of her female counterparts the chaos has mainly been caused the men that have driven the career. Kesha’s visual creative collaborator for this album, Brian Roettinger, seems to have riffed off that energy but instead is a safe pair of hands to work with, and knowingly, respectfully works with the ethos of the singer’s new work. All the typography for the visual identity around the album echoes the mayhem of what the muse has been through; the typography laid out back-to-front, upside down, mirrored unexpectedly whilst still being recognisable. Perhaps we are used to our female musicians carrying this lived experience?
Everything is stripped back; from Kesha’s lack of makeup in the videos to producer Rick Rubin’s use of Kesha’s own voice notes together with Sunday service organ-esque keys as recorded elements within the finished album. There’s a lot of self-flagellation within the lyrics ‘You don’t wanna be changed like it changed me’ (Eat the Acid) and ‘There’s a fine line between what’s entertainin’ and what’s just exploiting the pain’ (Fine Line) and to real push the sacred envelope ‘it’s time I’m comin’ down off of the cross’ (Fine Line). At the mid-point we are gifted a Ram Dass interlude, with Kesha revealing that after being in treatment for bulimia she was given a copy of Dass’ seminal ‘Be Here Now’ and has carried it with her ever since.
The album ends with the song Happy that samples a recording of a wizard friend (who doesn’t have a wizard friend nowadays?), saying ‘Sometimes you think you’re doing the magic and sometimes the magic is doing you’. At the launch party Kesha was there in an immaculate white dress with matching white kitten heels. With a radiant glow shining over her, she’s not been reborn, but there is a graceful vengeance in the album that has clearly rebuilt her over years of trauma, and she feels like she is carrying magic.
Although there is this spiritual side to the work, there are still tracks that are clearly made to end up as remixes on dancefloors. Kesha probably knows that these songs will be diced and spliced, chopped and changed – but this time it feels like she’s more in control than ever.
Rosemary Cronin
Keisha, Gag Order, is available from all the usual music streaming platforms
