“I ALWAYS wanted to empower people, to lift them up and encourage them to love themselves,” says Kesha about her emotionally wrought new album Gag Order.
“I have beautiful moments — I cry from happiness. And the same day, I can then also have severe anxiety seven hours later. I felt it was doing a disservice to not let people know that my emotions come in and out like ocean tides.”
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The former party girl has undergone plenty of soul searching since we last met in LA in 2020.
Then she was pushing her positivity and counting her blessings through her record High Road after a traumatic number of years.
But for her fifth album, she turned to legendary producer Rick Rubin to create a raw and vulnerable record that shows another side of her.
Kesha says: “Rick told me that the best song is a prayer. And that’s really stuck with me — that’s how I look at my music. It’s not my job. It’s not just an activity I do that I enjoy. It’s a prayer. And hopefully that can echo out to other people, and they can relate to it.”
Kesha says she is a bit nervous when we meet in a central London hotel to chat about her new record.
She’s only doing a few interviews about Gag Order, which is the most revealing album of her career. On it, she covers themes of anxiety, control and the truth.
The record label people who are camped out in the adjoining hotel room are thrown out by her publicist, who wants to make sure it’s a safe space for Kesha to talk.
Once they leave, Kesha gets started.
“I’m so proud that I’ve made this album,” she says smiling.
“My mum said she’s never been prouder of me and she feels like this is the album I’ve always wanted to make.”
With her blonde hair slicked back and wearing a tight black top and trousers, she looks toned and healthy.
Telling the truth has been difficult for Kesha who has been silenced for many years through ongoing legal action regarding producer Dr Luke — real name Lukasz Gottwald.
GAG ORDER
She filed a lawsuit against him in 2014 claiming “mental manipulation and emotional abuse” and alleged he had drugged and raped her.
He denied the allegations and sued Kesha for defamation.
In April 2016, her case was dismissed, with Gottwald’s defamation case to be heard in July.
Now with Gag Order, Kesha is letting her music tell her truth.
Lockdown gave Kesha, 36, “creative stillness”, which was terrifying for the singer.
She tells me: “I’ve been working on music or since I was like 15 so lockdown was the first time I was really forced to be still. And it was really uncomfortable. Personally, I also made some really big changes. I was engaged and we broke up during lockdown, which was really hard.
“The fear was so high and it was the first time I’d stopped and really self-reflected.”
This contemplation tied in with an experience which Kesha sees as a “spiritual awakening” led to her writing her first single off the album, Eat The Acid.
“I was lonely, and being locked in my house, I was having severe anxiety attacks,” she reveals.
“It was debilitating and I became barely functional for a couple of weeks. Something had to change and I only pray when I’m desperate. So that’s what I did.
“Then, I had this wild, psychedelic experience. It was visual, it was audio. And I felt a wave of warm light over my whole body.”
Kesha says she has never tried acid because, as the lyric in the song says, her mum had warned her that she will see things she can’t unsee.
She says: “That night, I felt like I’d taken a massive acid trip. And it’s strange even talking about it as these things sound mental.”
Kesha says Rubin pushed her to be open and honest without any judgment.
“There were plenty of tears,” she says. “I would bring in a song that in my head was saying the gnarliest s**t and Rick would say to make it even less polite.
“So, I went hard into my emotions. It was a gift from the universe to have this amazing, incredible and talented Buddha-like man to work with me.”
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There’s more spirituality with Ram Dass Interlude, inspired by the late spiritual teacher and yoga guru, while Oberon Zell, who runs a school for wizardry, is sampled on Happy after appearing on her podcast Kesha And The Creepies.
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Kesha says: “Ram Dass has been really important to me. I first got his book Be Here Now when I was in rehab for an eating disorder and I fell in love with it. Now I take the book with me everywhere.
“Being allowed to sample him on the album was a really special moment for me as Ram Dass is someone that has helped me feel seen.”
Fine Line is the album’s central track where Kesha gets angry and opens up about ways her legal case has gagged her.
“The day I wrote that song, I walked in like I was carrying a boulder,” says Kesha.
“I told everyone that I had ‘something really important to say and I didn’t know how to say it. All I know is it’s called Fine Line’. We worked on it for three years.”
Kesha’s lyrics on Fine Line take aim at those who let her down.
“This is where you f***ers pushed me, don’t be surprised if shit gets ugly, all the doctors and lawyers cut the tongue out of my mouth, I’ve been hiding my anger, but bitch look at me now.”
It finishes with the line “But hey, look at all the money we made off me”.
She says: “There’s such a commodification of women in society, especially women in entertainment, that sometimes it feels like I owe the public everything — every detail of every piece of everything I’ve ever done.
“But I’ve now realised that if you’re really not feeling well, you can say no.
“And it took me having to feel like I was having a mental breakdown to realise that but I was trying to walk this line.
“This infinite invisible line of pleasing everyone else and trying to control what people say or think about me. So why don’t I just f***ing get off the line?”
STRIPPED BACK
Gag Order is a stripped-back, minimal-sounding record almost like a demo in parts and this highlights the raw nature of the songs.
It’s the sound of a woman who has (mostly) turned her back on the Ke$ha of old, the defiant and loud pop star with the dollar sign in her name who emerged in 2010 with her album Animal and, two years later, Warrior.
She says: “There is a line in one of the album’s standout tracks Only Love Can Save Us Now, ‘The bitch I was, she’s dead. Her grave desecrated. She’s dead. Pay her respects. Welcome to the new era’, and that’s how I feel.
“I feel like getting older is so f***ing fabulous. You don’t even know how good you have it when you’re young. I spent so much of my 20s picking myself apart and hating myself and my body. Now I’m so f***ing happy that I’m not in that phase of my life any more. I’m so grateful.”
By digging deep and dealing with her “ugly emotions” Kesha has a new-found happiness and says she only surrounds herself with “real” friends and family.
Eight-year-old niece Luna features on Only Love Reprise while her mum, singer-songwriter Pebe Sebert, also guests.
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She says: “I only surround myself with people that I can have a real conversation with. The only people I have in my life are people that give a s**t about me as a human.
“I only hang out with people who hype each other up. It’s all about empowering each other. The happier everyone is in the world, the happier we can be for each other and that’s why I ended the album with Happy — it’s an important track.
“And Drama is a fun track too. That song is me taking the p**s out of the fact that I couldn’t sit at my house and garden and live a totally quiet normal life as part of me likes the drama of it all.
“Not crazy drama, just a little touch of it. It’s interwoven with a sample of the Ramones’ I Wanna Be Sedated, which is a really fun song I used to vacuum to during lockdown.
“Lyrically it’s actually quite dark but there’s a line about how I wanna come back as the house cat because I really do pray to God that I come back as a house cat.”
As our interview comes to an end, Kesha gives me a hug and declares: “This is the beginning of something new for me.
“It’s been hard confronting emotions and making light of the difficult times but I’m so happy with this album. I feel like I’ve gotten my lust for life and my lust for music.
“I’m so inspired to continue down this path and just keep growing.
“And if a song is prayer, then I also want to just keep on praying.”
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