AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Who said playtime is only for kids? Certainly not Kesha.
KESHA: We overlook that as adults. Like, you don't have to be messed up. You don't have to be drinking. You can just, like, dance and play and, like, really be expressive of yourself in a joyful way. Like, I love that I get to create that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOYRIDE")
KESHA: (Singing) Are you a man? 'Cause I'm a bi-bi-bi-bi (ph). I'm already rich, just looking for that mm.
RASCOE: Kesha has made a whole lot of No. 1 hits over the last two decades, amassed a global fan base and become one of pop music's most recognizable stars. Now, Kesha is kicking off a new world tour called the Freedom Tour.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOYRIDE")
KESHA: (Singing) I'm just looking for a joyride, joyride. I'm just looking for a good time tonight.
RASCOE: The Freedom Tour was inspired by her own journey to freedom and recent struggles.
KESHA: I have internalized a lot of things that don't actually belong to me, whether it's from society or reading comments on social media, things my exes have said or people that want to hurt me. It kind of led me down this path of trying to reclaim my body, my sexuality, my joy and, like, quite frankly, my entire life. I have one life. I mean, I probably believe I have multiple lives, but I think this is my last one. Like, this is my last lifetime. I've been told that by three different people.
RASCOE: Oh, wow. Three different psychics told you this was your last lifetime? That's deep.
KESHA: Right? OK, I had one Ayurvedic astrologer last week tell me - he's like, you know, this is your last incarnation. You'll have the choice to come back, but you're probably not going to pick to come back. And I was like, absolutely not going to be coming back. It's been real.
RASCOE: OK (laughter).
KESHA: So if this is, in fact, my last incarnated life as a human, then I need to, like, stop waiting for permission to really live it.
RASCOE: Well, when you think about freedom, you have not always been free as an artist. For nearly two decades, you were trapped in an exclusive recording agreement and didn't have full ownership or control over your material. How do you look back on that time in your life?
KESHA: It just made no sense to me spiritually, how something that's coming from inside of me that's generated by me, I couldn't have the rights to, like, have control over. There are just so many instances where I wasn't allowed to pick which songs would go on my record. I got to write the songs. I got to sing the songs. So for someone else to get to have control over, like, the narrative of who I am to be put into the world for mass consumption was, like, it just never felt right. My goal in my life, since I was in high school, I remember always being driven by wanting to create a safe space for all people and making people feel safe to be authentic and safe to feel joy, and just permission to be themselves. When that message traveled through so many other channels and I didn't have, like, a say in that, it could get really frustrating when, like, who you are in the world on a mass scale is not who you are truly in the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIE YOUNG")
KESHA: (Singing) I hear your heart beat to the beat and the drums. Oh, what a shame...
RASCOE: You do pop music, and so some of that can be seen as just fun, you know, light. Do you think that people take pop music seriously enough, if that makes sense?
KESHA: I have the utmost respect for the art of pop music. Like, it starts in my brain as, like, some overwhelming emotion. And then it travels through my mouth, in the form of lyrics and melody, and, like, through my fingers, through the form of a guitar, piano or, like, programming. And then it's through my feet in the form of, like, dancing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIE YOUNG")
KESHA: (Singing) Let's make the most of the night like we're going to die young.
I actually feel like it takes collective, like, the collective conscious, closer to the truth of a particular moment in time. Pop songs are like this 3 1/2-minute little nugget to, like, fast-track you to an emotion. I find pop songs to be alchemy. I think they're magical.
RASCOE: I feel you. I feel - 'cause, you know, and if you're in a stadium, singing along to this song, there is a connective tissue there - right? - between all these people.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KESHA AND UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE: (Singing) I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums. Oh, what a shame that you came here with someone. So while you're here in my arms, let's make the most of the night like we're going to die young.
KESHA: Totally. I always call music, like, the facial tissue between the earth and the spiritual realm. But do people need to take that seriously? I mean, the music I make specifically, I call it the gospel of the goose. Like, my highest form of - like, when I'm vibrating the highest, that is when I'm just being stupid as [expletive] and I am being a silly goose.
RASCOE: I hadn't heard the goose, but that makes sense now that you talk about a silly goose.
KESHA: (Laughter)
RASCOE: I hadn't heard that, but that makes sense. I want to talk to you about your new song that you just released, "Origami! " How does that song speak to who Kesha is today?
KESHA: That song I wrote a year and change ago. I really wanted to immortalize my sexual liberation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ORIGAMI!")
KESHA: (Singing) To the bedroom, to the kitchen, to the bathroom at the addition. In the Uber, to the airport, to the penthouse, yeah, on the top floor. Kick it up a notch.
It's just about being, like, exactly who I am without shame and finding my way back to my playfulness, which has been, like, a hard-fought fight, let me tell you. Like, the fact that I can, like, write a silly song with, like, funny, sexual innuendo again, is, like, a miracle.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ORIGAMI!")
KESHA: (Singing) I'm serving supersexual. Flexible, intellectual. Meet me down...
You know, society might try to tell me, you know, like, you're in your late 30s, you shouldn't be whatever. Like, says who?
RASCOE: Well, yeah. I mean, I'm 41. I mean, what are we supposed to do, go out to pasture?
KESHA: That's what I'm saying.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
KESHA: Like, I am [inaudible] too.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ORIGAMI!")
KESHA: (Singing) Oh-woah (ph), oh-woah, oh. Oh-woah, oh-woah, oh. Make me origami. Oh-woah, oh-woah, oh. Oh-woah, oh-woah, oh.
RASCOE: I got to ask, like, how does it feel to perform songs in your catalog that you wrote decades ago? I mean, you have so many massive hits - "Tik Tok," "Blow," "Take It Off."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TAKE IT OFF")
KESHA: (Singing) There's a place downtown where the freaks will come around. It's a hole in the wall. It's a dirty free-for-all.
RASCOE: What is it like to revisit that material from earlier in your life?
KESHA: Honestly, I had to go through a whole process to get to the point where I now, like, am obsessed, and I'm so grateful for all of those songs. And I had, like, this whole healing process realizing that I needed to play these songs with my fans because this is, like, part of what makes them happy and how we fell in love, and it's part of the love story between me and my animals.
(SOUNDBITE OF KESHA SONG, "YOUR LOVE IS MY DRUG")
KESHA: And so on this tour, I'm going to go out into the audience with my animals, and I'm going to dance with them. Like, we are going to collectively heal this [expletive]. And, like, a woman who's 39 years old, who has been through what I've been through, who decides to love herself. Like, I think that's kind of the most radical thing, is if we, like, love ourselves. Wow.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUR LOVE IS MY DRUG")
KESHA: (Singing) 'Cause your love, your love, your love is my drug. Your love, your love, your love.
RASCOE: That's the musician Kesha. She's kicking off her new world tour, the Freedom Tour, starting this weekend. Thank you so much for joining us.
KESHA: Oh, my gosh, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUR LOVE IS MY DRUG")
KESHA: (Singing) Twice. Better left to my own devices. I'm addicted. It's a crisis. 'Cause my friends think I've gone crazy. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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