This music shudders and roils the way it lingers in the body feels potent on an album loaded with allusions to foundational trauma (though, per its title, much remains between the lines).

Played through the right set of speakers, the bleak and faithless opener “Something to Believe In” hits the chest harder than it hits the ears. The production of this record-which Kesha made with Rick Rubin and various returning collaborators including her mom, songwriter Pebe Sebert-trends dark and stormy, powered by rumbling synths that sound like tornado sirens, or like a sandworm is lurking somewhere nearby. The old Kesha can’t come to the phone right now, etc. But the first verse ends with a coffin-nailing declaration that reverberates across the record: “The bitch I was, she dead, her grave desecrated.” Tonally and spiritually, Gag Order recalls another album made by a pop star in the wake of a high-profile conflict with a powerful industry antagonist. “Only Love Can Save Us Now,” an anomaly, starts off with a glimmer of bygone times, with Kesha brat-rapping over a gimmicky cash register beat. The survivor’s vim of Rainbow and youthful bacchanalia of its successor, 2020’s High Road, are gone this Kesha is feeling her age, processing her trauma, relinquishing hope and then digging deeper in search of some more.

Speaking out has never seemed so perilous.Īnd so the Kesha of Gag Order is changed-still working in bold, chaotic gestures, but with the color drained from her palette. “There’s so many things I said that I wish I left unsaid,” she sings on one new song. Luke have been dropped or dismissed, and his countersuit for defamation is set to go to trial in July. But in opting to “just let ’em talk,” Kesha invited the question of what she herself was withholding-a question that is bolded and underlined by the title of her fifth album, Gag Order. Kesha’s claims against Dr. That album, Rainbow, was notably vague in its references to Kesha’s legal predicament its core message is one of self-love and self-determination, haters (and unsympathetic judges) be damned.

We are who we are lyrics kesha