Sunday, April 4th, 2010 | Posted by Chrissy

Ke$ha’s Animal Needs to Be Tamed

Ke$ha is the new and popular pop star of the moment. Her single “Tik Tok” hit the number one charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. She released her debut album, Animal, on January 5th, 2010 and it has already debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 albums chart. This 22-year old is quickly winning hearts with her pop beats and playful lyrics but, if we all sat down and took a closer listen, we might regret making her #1 so quickly.

Animal is made up of 14 so called catchy songs that sound very similar to one another and contain strange, vulgar lyrics that bring out a shallow side to Ke$ha that we may have never assumed was there. When “Tik Tok” was first released, we all immediately knew that this artist was going to be a party girl… but we didn’t know that she was going to be a sleazy, trashy party animal. Ke$ha’s whole album is all about her going to parties, getting drunk, not listening to anyone but herself and basically acting like an immature brat. Not to mention, most of her lyrics are pointless. Let’s take her song “Party At a Rich Dude’s House” for example: I wake up in the front yard/(we don’t care)/wine stain on the sofa/(we don’t care)/I threw up in the closet/and I don’t care/’cause we’re young and broke/and I can’t find my coat/’cause the sun is coming up/and oh my god I think I’m still drunk. The track’s title wasn’t very promising to begin with and each line she sang made me think less and less of her. That wasn’t the only song whose lyrics and meaning discouraged me from listening to the rest of her album. “Dinosaur,” as innocent as the title sounds, is about an older gentleman who is ‘hitting’ on Ke$ha and her friends. She compares him to a dinosaur and tells him to go back to the museum. The tone of the song is not befitting the topic and even sounds childish; there is a continuous whistling rhythm in the chorus along with the sound of girls giggling. I don’t know which was worse – the topic of the song in general or the approach she took to singing about it.

Now you may be one of those people who don’t really pay attention to lyrics and have put Ke$ha on your good list for her catchy melodies and pop beats. Unfortunately, those catchy melodies and pop beats seem to be the same for every chorus of every song. It becomes quite irratating to listen to once you realize, ‘Wait, didn’t I just hear this?’ It also does not help that her voice is auto tuned (auto tuning is a process in which pitch in vocal and instrumental performances is corrected electronically) in almost all of the songs. Once you’re about halfway through the album, her music begins to bash in your ears because you’re hearing the same sounds being repeated over and over again.

Though there are many negative comments to make about Ke$ha’s music, there are a select few songs that do her justice. “Your Love Is My Drug”, “Tik Tok”, “Take It Off”, “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”, and “Animal” – these five songs are her most original songs, ones that truly show her style, and her only songs that won’t make you want to rip your hair out. “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” has the misfortune of a lame title but in fact is one of the most distinct songs on her album. Why? One, it doesn’t sound like her voice is being auto tuned. Two, it’s a ballad. Three, it’s not about partying or getting drunk and four, it shows a completely different side of Ke$ha than what the rest of the album was showing before. If Ke$ha just stuck to making her album a balance between her crazy side and her good side, then maybe it wouldn’t have been as big of a blow.

An iTunes listener commented, “This album takes every cliche trend in radio pop and stock piles as many of them as possible, 3 minutes at a time. The lyrics could be written by any ditzy 14 year old girl. Her ‘voice’ is auto tuned.” Add that all together and what do you get? 14 tracks of the same music, bashing your ears and making you wonder what the pop music world has come to. Ke$ha hasn’t started off as well as she should have, but she hasn’t quite struck out yet. Strike one went to her awful lyrics and strike two went to her repeated rhythms. Strike three? Let’s wait until she makes some music videos and watch what happens.