Breaking out onto the music scene 15 years ago with the release of her first hit song “TiK ToK,” pop superstar Kesha has experienced the highs, the lows and everything in-between throughout her career so far, while continuing to fight on and rise above the obstacles that she has been faced with.
From her decade-long legal battle with her former music producer, Dr. Luke, to recently creating her very own label, Kesha Records, the 37-year-old music artist and business leader is now speaking out about her truths, through her new music, as well as front-and-center on the biggest stages in the world.
Jeff Conway: Kesha, you did such a lovely job with your TED Talk.
Kesha: Thank you. I’m so proud of it! I have done so many things that I’m so proud of recently and like, the TED Talk is a dream I never thought I could actually dream to do, so it’s beyond a dream come true. It’s wild that a girl who – you know, I was going to go to Columbia University but then I ended up, due to record label requests, dropping out of school and getting my GED. So, it’s wild that a girl with her GED, that never even technically got the diploma – I was in the International Baccalaureate program. I wanted to go to Columbia to study Psychology and Comparative Religion, but you know, per request, I dropped out, got my GED, moved to Los Angeles.
Looking back at the music that I started with, which was full of irony and kind of went over people’s heads, I feel like I got labeled as a party girl and very unintelligent, and that’s a stigma I’ve been trying to fight against my entire career. So, for the TED Talk to come in the same week as my first single [“Joyride”] feels like the world is finally getting a real view of the person I am, which is very multifaceted.
Conway: You bring up in your TED Talk too, Kesha, you said what drives you most is to write pop songs. So, in what ways would you say that your career choice and being the singer-songwriter that you are, has brought the most value and satisfaction to your life?
Kesha: Oh my god, I love this question! Well, let me start at the beginning. I started writing songs to deal with my emotions. I’m a highly sensitive person – I’m a triple Pisces, so these emotions come up very intensely and people can do a lot of things with them. If you feel rage, people can go bash a window of a car, but for me, if I feel rage, I take it to the studio and I currently surround myself with incredibly safe people that help me take my emotion and we alchemize it into song.
So, it’s become the way I process life and the beautiful part of writing music or making any art of any kind is that you get to process something in, hopefully, a safe way. Once it has come out of your body and onto the page or into the microphone, if you choose to share it, that healing that you experience, then can possibly help to heal other people. The reason music relates globally is because we’re all just talking about our emotions and it humanizes all of us. You see yourself in a song. You see an emotion that you have in a song – it’s relational, it’s connective – and it’s for me, very spiritual because I believe we’re all one and music is one of the most beautiful ways to feel that. We’re all connecting to the same human emotion because we really are all connected.
Conway: So, what does it mean then to you now, being an independent artist, and having the rights to your voice back? Has it changed the way you choose to navigate through your work and through music moving forward.
