Also this…
…versus this
Also this…
…versus this
Speaking of Ke$ha week, if you can’t admit the straight line between these two things you are lying to yourself.
This is protest. This is not the kind of protest that anyone else would find useful – cue every single soundbite of every talking head that complained about Occupy’s lack of a “message,” ignoring the fact that occupation itself is a message and if you can’t interpret it, fuck off anyway. “Party” is protest because it’s about relieving oneself (pun intended) via responding violently to a system that is violent, daily, to the poor, and forcing it to actually witness the existence of the bodies of the unwealthy as they destroy its shit. If we’re being dramatic. This is about being violent and – as is the only possibility in Ke$ha’s universe – using weaponized partying to achieve her goals (it’s not “Fight For Your Right to Party”, it’s “Party for Your Right to Fight”). She doesn’t need to think that her actions will actually create any systemic changes; they obviously won’t. But the act of getting relief and release and a great fucking story at the expense of one’s oppressor is, in my estimation, much more than what’s needed to consider one a political dissident.
Zach Lyon on Ke$ha’s “Party at a Rich Dude’s House” on One Week // One Band
“Weaponized partying.”
A standout post in a standout week on OW/OB, and I’m hardly Ke$ha fan #1. Although I have to say Zach is winning me over a tiny bit more, just as Jonathan did with his tireless Ke$ha coverage, and Tony did when he suggested that our ’70s glam band throw in a “TiK ToK” aside to track the trashy, glittery impulses forward from the Dolls and Iggy.
(via davebloom)
This post was great, though I missed reblogging about it the day it ran because I was unplugged and focused in my library carrel. On that note, two things:
If you haven’t been following the OW/OB Ke$ha coverage, here it is. I highly suggest cranking Animal, pouring a drink (probably something trashy like a rum and coke or a glass of cheap vodka on the rocks, only without the rocks), and catching up - preferably as part of some pre-drink routine before you go out and make some bad decisions that really aren’t that bad but that you will exaggerate in lyrics stories come Monday morning.
Blah Blah Blah ft. 3OH!3 [Animal]
I used to want to shoot the Internet to the moon and force everyone to have to go back to the library to read the encyclopedia look people in the eye. Smartphones too, fuck. Groups of three or four friends get on the Metro, sit down, and stare silently into their phones the entire time, never once saying a word to each other; always makes me wonder if they just spent the entire day like that. My theory used to be that it wasn’t the anonymity of the Internet that turned people into assholes, but the fact that the Internet transfers our existence into a machine before shooting it back at someone else. I believed that it was the actual lack of sensual interaction that turned people into trolls – the warmth of their body in proximity to yours even if there’s a store counter between you, the tics in their voice, the sight of their eyes, the bump of their shoulder on the train. It’s a subtle difference but I’d rather believe that the nastiness of the generic human soul isn’t locked in a cage, waiting for the guards to look away so it can pick the lock sneak out, but that human affection is enabled by the magnificence of someone else’s bodily existence.
Don’t be a little bitch with your chit chat
Both are wrong. I learned two things: people suck in real life, too, and any weapon can just as well be used for good. Trolling, hatred, prejudice, (fire). They often work. And this isn’t a bad thing.
When I talked about “Kiss N Tell,” I mentioned Ke$ha’s usage of “slut” as a reclamation. Now, both “Blah 3x” and “KNT” were written long before K$ was a public figure, so it’s anachronistic to say that this reclamation occurred in response to the public’s opinion of her. But I like her, and I like the team behind her character, so I’m happy to assume that there was some prescience at work, and everyone knew that a famous Ke$ha, with songs like “TiK ToK” and this one, would be defined by two words: 1. trashy and 2. slut. There are probably some other synonyms for those two words near the top of the list, but after that, the jump to third-most-used descriptor should be immense. Not going to scientifically test this. But I know that I have never once witnessed someone mentioning their attraction to Ke$ha, or mentioning sex with Ke$ha, or mentioning the vagina of Ke$ha (this is, more often than not, the topic of discussion I hear in bars and on my Facebook wall) without someone else mentioning her various STDs. The herpes, the crabs, the gonorrhea, she has all of them. It would be a bit too obvious to mention that Mick Jagger never had these allegations thrown against him. The last time I went to the bar near my parents’ house, I overheard an entire fight (not argument, fight) that transpired after a guy told his girlfriend that the celebrity she resembles most is Ke$ha. He kept trying to say that he meant it as a good thing! She’s totally hot! And the girl was on the verge of tears.
Just show me where your dick’s at
“Blah Blah Blah” is the only single about sex that she’s released. And it isn’t about sex. It’s about power, it’s about disrespect, and it’s about fighting dehumanization with dehumanization. It’s probably the first catalyst behind every “slut” that’s ever been thrown at her, and it’s just as much a response against that catastrophe in itself. It’s a song about genderfucking The Club. Not about flipping the roles, but making them more equal by having K$ sing the “Girl you talk too much… shut up” part to a male that acts just as bad. Note well that this dynamic probably isn’t the endgoal, though she obviously has a lot of fun with the scene. This is a huge part of the mythology: The Club of Ke$ha’s universe isn’t a perfect place, but the fantasy of gender equality is alive and well, fucked up as it may be. “Maybe everyone should just be nice to each other” is a sequence of words said, a great majority of the time, by the individual debating with the privilege on their side. Sometimes it takes learning to realize that fighting fire with fire is a paradox that often works; sometimes it takes being burnt. Kindness rarely kills the way it’s said to.
I’m in love with this… song
Dude, she only wants to fuck you because songs are intangible concepts that don’t have a penis. In his defense, he’s just as bad: Ke$ha Studios brings in the 3OH!3 guy to literally do the one thing he’s advanced at: embodying the spirit of douchiness. His verse exists to remind us what she’s fighting against, and by jove, he aces the test. Achievement unlocked: mega douche MASTER!!!!!!!!
And best of all, it’s shrill. I had trouble with it at first. I’m still not crazy about it, because this is positively the most annoying, ugly song in her catalogue. It’s obviously supposed to be: autotuned all the way down into a hell-gurgle, guitar blasts that sort of sound like strumming an untuned bass guitar, trash fuzz all over the floor, and a nauseating four-note keyboard melody that never goes away or apologizes. And its annoyingness was just fresh enough to dominate the pop charts for a few months. This is weaponized trolling at its finest and I’m in love with it. Remember you’re being had, and the ugliness will dissolve into beauty. Forget you’re being had, and well, at least you’re feeling something.
I actually thought about just sticking the video of Roseanne singing the National Anthem at the top up there.
Yes. Yesss. “Blah Blah Blah” 4eva.
It goes like: our heroine, Kesha Rose Sebert, was born 24 years ago to the type of mother who would name a child “Kesha.” Pebe Sebert was a country singer-songwriter best known for co-writing the lyrics to “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle To You,” which would be a success for Joe Sun in 1978 and then Dolly Parton in 1980. She raised Kesha and her brothers, single, in Nashville. (No one in the family knows who the father is; in an interview with Rolling Stone, Kesha revealed that a man had called claiming to be her father, but she decided it to be untrue upon learning that he has a video game chair. Fair.) Pebe was poor and a hippie, and that’s how the family was raised. She taught Kesha to sing and write. In 2005, the family appeared in an episode of The Simple Life, but that was months before Kesha threw up in Paris Hilton’s closet. Around this time, a demo of hers ended up in the hands of mega-producer Max Martin and his protégé Dr. Luke, who both fell hard for the goofy freestyle rap she stuck at the end of a trip-hop track after she ran out of lyrics. She moved to Los Angeles and worked for several years as a songwriter and backup singer, writing songs for The Veronicas, Miley Cyrus, and Flo Rida, contributing backup vox to Britney and Paris records and appearing in the video of “I Kissed a Girl” for some reason. In late 2008, she was unexpectedly pulled into the studio where Flo Rida’s “Right Round” was being recorded and was asked to sing a hook. She went uncredited, thinking she would simply be replaced by another singer, but the song went to #1 with her voice in the chorus. She didn’t see a dollar out of it and remained broke, so she added an ironic dollar sign to her name. It stands for this. Ke$ha was created.
OUR HEROINE. :: swoon ::
Hey, guys: Zach Lyon is covering Ke$ha for OW/OB this weeeeeeeeeeek!
Ke$ha - “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (Bob Dylan tribute)
I blogged this when it first made the rounds (having been brought to my attention by Dave), but - you know what? - I like it enough to post it again tonight.
This is a video of Ke$ha “and friends” (whatever the hell that means) running through a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers” in some tragic afterparty situation.
Ke$ha: I love you. Never change.
