Last month, Kesha was on SNL and performed the song you see above in full neon body paint under a blacklight and it is amazing. The giant keytar in the background is also amazing.
The music video just came out this week and features clips of Kesha in the neon body paint. It also features a hallucinogenic desert scene that is an obvious homage to the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. The first half of the video is kind of boring, but the second half is great. I am not sure why they didn't do the animation throughout. Maybe to match the fact that the verses of the song are kind of boring but the chorus is rockin.
Here is a clip from Beatles' Yellow Submarine so you get what I mean.
I don't normally do this, but I am going to have two days of Ke$ha.
Today I am posting Kesha's biggest song Tik Tok along the the amazing Simpsons intro-parody and tomorrow I will post the new Your Love is My Drug video with the SNL body-paint performance.
I am not exactly sure who Kesha with a dollar sign is supposed to be. There are elements of vapid pop star, bold pop art, music industry superficiality, and feminist expression. Kesha is caught somewhere between Lady Gaga, Peaches, and Christina Aguilera. The first time I heard Kesha was on NPR, the second time was on Saturday Night Live, and the third time was on a ground breaking episode of the Simpsons where they changed the song and the opening sequence to parody of a Kesha video.
The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live are two of the gatekeepers of pop culture and Kesha broke through in less than a year. Kesha may not be doing anything as controversial as Lady Gaga or Peaches, but she is changing the face of pop music in ways we won't really see for years to come.
Kesha doesn't seem to be another auto-tuned, corporate music tool, but that is where she got her start. She got hired on by major pop producer Dr. Luke because of a demo tape of songs she wrote. She did backup vocals and music video appearances for best of the worst: Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and Flo Rida. But beyond being Barbie filler, she has also co-written several songs.
Kesha was getting some exposure, but it was Tik Tok that changed everything. Tik Tok got noticed on MySpace and the record company started pushing it. It was released as a single and reached top ten status in several countries. In the US, it has broke into mainstream.
The Simpsons have had the same theme song intro for nearly 20 years. This season they aired the a pardoy of the Tik Tok video with Lisa playing the part of Kesha, supported by loads of secondary characters. It not only boosts the status of Kesha, but also boosts the relavancy of the Simpsons.
