Ke$ha's lifestyle is like a VH1 "Behind the Music" special in the making. On her tour bus, she has a wall full of photos of naked male groupies.
"Any guy who comes on my bus who thinks they're going to get me -- they have to drop trou at the front of the bus before they can come to the back lounge," she tells me.
Her reason for making men pose for naked photos is simple: "It's fun for me."
"Rock 'n' roll used to consist of drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll. Now with the frantic, overactive media, you're not allowed to go out and get naked, or go crazy," she says.
"So I just keep it rock 'n' roll on my bus."
Ke$ha says her rock star lifestyle isn't so different than what male rock stars do with groupies.
"Why can't chicks do it, too?" she asks.
It's not like Ke$ha, 24, ever hides her partying ways. She sings about them and makes music videos chronicling them.
The video for her star-making song "Tik Tok" begins with Ke$ha crawling out of a bathtub, hung over, then brushing her teeth with Jack Daniels.
That bathtub scene was inspired by a Vegas excursion from L.A.
"The first time I ever woke up in a bathtub was in Vegas," she says.
(The first time?)
Here's the story: One time, she came to Vegas (she was un-famous and not rich) in a red Trans Am she called Death, because someone had keyed "Death" into the side of the car before she bought it.
"So we drove Death to Vegas -- me and three of my friends, who are all fabulous gay men. We had $20 and we went absolutely (expletive) crazy."
She woke up the next morning in a strange tub "surrounded by naked gay men," she says fondly.
"There was no toothpaste, so we all just brushed our teeth with Jack Daniels."
"Tik Tok" was just the beginning of her dance floor hits, from "Your Love Is My Drug" to "Blow" and "Take It Off."
To a pop observer, it seems there's a three-way race among Ke$ha, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. But Ke$ha doesn't see it that way.
"Everybody tries to make it like we're competing. In my mind, we're a wall of very powerful chicks. It's girl power at their finest."
Ke$ha's real enemy is the backlash -- certain music listeners don't like her or don't think she's talented.
But she is very skilled. On tour, she opens her concert by playing a heavy drum, then moves on to guitar, piano, theremin and Kaoss Pad.
She doesn't just leave instrument details up to sound technicians.
"I actually had to rig my theremin. I'm running it through two delay pedals and an arpeggiator. It's out of control," she says.
So as you can see, there's a problem with underestimating Ke$ha. As critic Stephan Lee of Entertainment Weekly wrote of her current tour: "I was surprised ... by how unexpectedly awesome the show was."
What I'm impressed with is Ke$ha's excellent and varied choice of tones and song textures.
When I question her about how she pieced together various songs, she gets excited to talk about the music.
"The riff at the beginning of 'Tik Tok' is a tiny, janky Casio keyboard we found on eBay for $10," she says. "It just instantly sounds silly and fun and not serious, but like a party."
Meanwhile, she wrote the album title song, "Animal," after being inspired at an Arcade Fire concert.
She wanted "Animal" to have that "Arcade Fire or Flaming Lips euphoric chord progression," she says.
For the song "Take It Off," she carefully chose synthesizer tones that evoke "an ominous, dark and twisted dance party."
For all of this musical knowledge, and for her well-chronicled rock star shenanigans, Ke$ha (who grew up poor to middle class in the middle of Tennessee) is being rewarded with riches and fame.
So how does she like being famous so far?
"It's pretty awesome. I can't complain," she says.
"The best part is I get to sing songs I wrote about all the stupid (expletive) I do for a living," she says and laughs.
So this is how you should start thinking about Ke$ha: The silly, skilled singer and multi-instrumentalist who parties and objectifies the opposite sex. That sounds pretty
rock 'n' roll to me.
source
No comments:
Post a Comment