Virtually a decade has handed since Kesha unlocked the subsequent degree to pop stardom with “Tik Tok.” It feels extra like a number of lifetimes, throughout which the pop artist has dabbled in actuality TV, reshaped her sound, type, picture, and gone by way of the wringer with a high-profile courtroom case.
Now, she’s coming into her subsequent musical section with the album Gag Order, set to drop Could 19 through Kemosabe/RCA Data, which her reps say excavates “the deepest recesses of her soul so far.”
However first, the lead tracks from it, “Eat the Acid” and “Fantastic Line,” which arrived on the stroke of midnight, and are accompanied with the darkish album art work that depicts Kesha’s head in a plastic bag — a literal visualization to its “gag order” title.
“Fantastic Line,” an introspective ballad, and “Eat the Acid,” an experimental pop quantity, are notable for the absence of drums or a beat of any variety.
Rick Rubin produced the forthcoming album, which Kesha and her group describe as a “post-pop” “emotional exorcism” on which she finds empowerment in baptism-by-fire self-discovery and acceptance.
“With out the darkness there isn’t any gentle. So I let my darkness have the sunshine. I can’t struggle the reality. Life is tough and painful. It’s for everybody,” she writes in an album manifesto. “An artist doesn’t exist to make others glad. I imagine an artist provides voice, movement, shade to the feelings all of us have. The great feelings, and the unmanageably fucking depressing ones.”
Kesha has notably been in a authorized battle with Dr. Luke since 2014, when the producer and Kemosabe Data founder filed a defamation swimsuit towards her for claiming that he drugged and raped her in 2005. Only a few months in the past, a New York choose scheduled a brand new trial begin date — July 19 — for the case after key points made its prior February begin date unworkable.
Kesha is credited as govt producer on Gag Order, her fifth solo studio album and the followup to 2020’s Excessive Highway, which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Stream “Fantastic Line” and “Eat the Acid” beneath.