Ke$ha – ‘Take It Off’
So, it’s finally getting an official release after weeks in the charts. Are you ever slightly suspiciuous about why certain songs exist, and what they are trying to do? Do you ever wonder whether they’re attempting to truly nail a feeling that most of us have experienced, or would like to experience, or if they’re just trying to cross as many items off a To-Do list as possible?
I ask this because there are a moments in this particular song when it becomees transparently clear that her job is not so much to get a party started as to annoy the parents of unruly teenage children. The idea being that you are far more likely to want to buy something that your parents disapprove of, because that is the way pop music has always worked in the past. Nothing is more guaranteed to distract a young mind like your dad tutting and switching the radio off whenever a song comes on.
(Here’s the video. It’s glitteral.)
Of course, there has to be something worth getting distracted over too, so the disapproval and the “OMG GIMME GIMME” are not mutually exclusive. A pop star acting like the pie-eyed piper, leading innocent young minds astray, towards a sleazy hot night club where sensible jumpers are thrown aside in the rush to get messy, that’s every teen’s dream and every parent’s worst nightmare, right?
Wrong! Every parent’s worst nightmare is a pop star acting like the pie-eyed piper, leading innocent young minds astry, towards a sleazy hot night club where sensible jumpers are thrown aside in the rush to get messy, and there is LITTER ON THE FLOOR! I KNOW!
And what’s with that Russian melody in the chorus? Is someone trying to add suspected communism to the list of potential awfulnesses which are taking place in this den of iniquity? Is Ke$ha that keen to exploit a generation gap which may not really be there – “Dad, can you ask Mum to get off the X-Box? It’s my turn!” – that she’s prepared to re-open old wounds between the US and the former USSR? I know the ’80s are really in right now, but we surely don’t need the Cold War back on top of everything else.
And why, when her album is just as stuffed with heartfelt balladry as it is trash-talking, pants-waving, naughtiness, has she released this as a single? It can’t JUST be because it’s the trashpants thing which is getting all the attention, and there’s a fear that if Kesh reveals that she’s a sensitive young flower after all, with real feelings and a good, pure heart, her appeal with disappear like a soap bubble on a cactus, can it?
Oh wait, I just checked. It’s GLITTER on the floor. Someone must’ve been making Christmas cards in there and neglected to hoover. CALL THE POLICE! MY CHILDREN ARE IN THERE!!
Download: Out now
www.keshasparty.com
BBC Music page
(Fraser McAlpine)
Daniel Franklin Gomez says: “Kesha was apparently born during a party to a single mom, and I guess it has some influence.”
Get Addicted says: “The Cali native has a rep for being…well, the polar opposite of Taylor Swift.”
Hit Te Floor says: “I did see a video before of her saying there would be nakedness in this video, but turns out to be an outright lie.”
View full post on BBC – Chart blog
