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And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #179: Ke$ha fans v Dr Luke
By Aly Barchi | Published on Friday 18 October 2013
Well here’s a searing debate that will likely rage till time’s bitter end, is Ke$ha’s career being stifled by producer and label boss Dr Luke’s “tyrannical finger”?
An alliance of Ke$ha fans, adamant that that is the case, have launched an online petition to ‘Free Ke$ha’ (and her “dwindling creativity”) from the corporate cosh of overbearing label bosses and, in particular, of pop tyrant Dr Luke. The main aim of the ‘Free Ke$ha’ crew is to have the ‘Tik Tok’ star released from an alleged eight-LP deal with Kemosabe Records, Dr Luke’s Sony imprint.
Silly and over-dramatic as all the phrasing of the petition is, this does sort of hark once again (I know, sorry) back to the topical topic of popstars, especially ones with XX chromosomes, and the alleged lack of real say they have as regards their image and career.
Britney Spears and newer face Sky Ferreira have both emerged recently revealing that they have felt leant on by management, label execs etc in different ways; Britney in the sense that she has to balance being ‘sexy’ with being a 31 year old ‘mom’ to two young children, and Sky in that she’s felt obliged to scale back her ‘alternative’ traits in order to appeal to the pre-teen mainstream.
That said, Spears, despite her feelings, still released a pretty ‘sexy’ video in ‘Work Bitch’, whilst Ferreira poses topless on the cover of her new LP ‘Night Time, My Time’, a thorny move she has a fair go at explaining in this new interview with Stereogum. And then, of course, there’s Miley. On which let’s not dwell.
In Ke$ha’s case, whilst she hasn’t made any complaints about feeling oversexed, she did say last year that she felt “forced” to promote her 2012 single ‘Die Young’ against her will, despite the incredibly ill-timing of its release, which coincided, by chance, with the mass school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut.
Though she later retracted the statement, and seems to have acted as she pleases ever since; drinking wee, making TV, having supernatural sex and generally happily enacting every PR’s darkest nightmare. And that, essentially, is Ke$ha’s image; the eccentric rebel with adequate artistic cred to hang with The Flaming Lips, the ‘weirdness’ in reserve to design lewd jewellery, and the dead-eyed commercial bent it takes to duet with Pitbull (this on a new single ‘Timber’, which is advertised by an image of a lady’s behind, which may be Ke$ha’s).
And given all that, and this, you’d hope anyone who encourages fans to “be yourself fucking always” would be themselves fucking always. You hear that, ‘Free Ke$ha’-ites? Ke$ha is herself fucking always. Or so she says when she has a single about trees falling over to plug.
Sign or don’t sign the ‘Free Ke$ha’ petition here.
