Kesha
High Road is the most “Kesha” Kesha record yet, and I am fucking here for it. The raps are raunchier, the anthems hookier and the ballads weepier. High Road takes Kesha’s personal and professional agency and cranks it to 11, and there’s nothing the haters can do to stop her. The singer, songwriter and producer born Kesha Rose Sebert has doubled down on the double entendres, raised both middle fingers and made a kaleidoscopic document of what happens when the party kids become party adults. It’s on-brand and on-point: a surly, sweet and subversive rampage through the pop landscape.
Ten years into a career that started with pre-breakfast Jack Daniels, we should (according to the rock journalist handbook) be talking about Kesha’s polish, consistency and maturity. And while those elements are there, they take a back seat to the unbridled debauchery that has been at the center of Kesha’s image from the get-go. The mature Kesha is “throwing all [her] big-girl panties in the garbage can because [she] can,” to quote the aptly subtitled “Potato Song (’Cuz I Want To).” The polish is glitter and superglue, and the consistency comes from Kesha throwing more curveballs more often.
Starting off the record with the piano-pop-jam-turned-booty-bass-praise-anthem “Tonight,” Kesha makes it clear that having survived some serious shit does not mean she is about to mellow out now. She’s at the point in her career where she could write straightforward tunes aimed at pop or AAA radio and just ride a predictable wave to a comfortable chart position. Third single “Resentment” — a weeper and a gotdamn half — featuring Sturgill Simpson (and Brian Wilson, and Wrabel) should be on country radio but, you know, country radio does a shitty job of supporting women and songs that don’t suck. Kesha’s ecumenical brand of chaos means that corporate America is going to have to meet her on her turf not theirs.
Instead of sticking to a sound that fits into the playlist machine, Kesha’s throwing glittery shoes into the gears and giving the fans the wildly divergent pop-culture casserole they are hungry for. Fuck a suit, fuck some market research — put the fans first all the fucking way. A tune like the pansexual, polyamorous romp “Kinky” is not for squares, but it is definitely for the oddballs and outsiders that have been by Kesha’s side since she woke up feeling like P-Diddy. The maximum party vibe gets set to the side for the triptych of “Shadow,” ”Honey” and ”Cowboy Blues,” setting up the (ahem) rising action in High Road’s narrative arc.
That’s right folks, Kesha made a damned concept record! It is an album-length character study about a performer trying to connect with her audience without reperforming her trauma. There’s conflict, climax, denouement — the whole dramatic deal. As the album winds down from “Father Daughter Dance” into “Chasing Thunder,” we learn a lot more about the wild woman singing “Raising Hell” and “My Own Dance.” By the time bonus track “Summer” rolls over the credits, the listener is left with a surprising amount of closure.
The concept is loose — it’s expressed through a clever bit of sequencing combined with hella honed songcraft, obscured by dance-pop bombast and the artist’s rejuvenated swagger. It’s an Easter egg for the nerds that go deep and the folks that keep Kesha records on repeat. Will it convert the haters? Nah. It’s not meant to. It is meant to reclaim an identity and restart the storyline in the wake of some fucked up shit. While we applaud Kesha for growing as a human being, we can appreciate that the goofiness and cathartic partying are authentic parts of her core: The title of High Road is a weed joke, after all.
