With her legal battle with producer Dr Luke behind her, Kesha lets her music do the talking on Period: a kitschy, catchy album of pop, dance and country. And Adrian Thrills says it's a fresh start for the singer who once brushed her teeth with Jack Daniels
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Long before last year's Brat Summer – a raucous celebration of It-Girl bravado and lime-green images masterminded by Charli XCX – we had what could have been called the Kesha Spring. Like Charli, Nashville-born Kesha Sebert made her name (in the late 2000s) as a party-starter who was the life and soul of every good night out.
Her attitude didn't go unnoticed. Kesha, 38, was a guest on Charli's vinyl remix album, Brat And It's Completely Different, released last autumn.
But bragging about brushing your teeth with Jack Daniels, as Kesha once did, only gets you so far, and she broadened her outlook after her initial breakthrough. Moving away from the cheerleader pop of songs such as hedonistic 2009 debut single Tik Tok, she worked with various rock acts, including Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips and Eagles Of Death Metal.
Following a collaboration with Alice Cooper, the Godfather of Shock Rock said that she'd rather be like Robert Plant than Britney Spears.
Her career was also derailed by a decade-long legal battle with former producer Lukasz Gottwald (aka Dr. Luke). Kesha sued Gottwald in 2014, alleging sexual and emotional abuse. The producer countersued for defamation and breach of contract. A settlement was finally reached in June 2023 – and there's a sense of relief on Period, her first album since then.
Titled after the American English word for full stop (and stylised as a pink dot on the album sleeve), Period is a return to the carefree Kesha of old: an effervescent blend of pop, dance and country, spiced up with humorous lyrics and a love of the trash aesthetic. It's a far cry from 2023's reflective Gag Order, on which the emotional impact of her legal woes loomed large.
'I only drink when I'm happy, and I'm drunk right now,' she sings on Freedom, showing off her impressive vocal range on a six-minute track that starts with jazz piano and a choral chant before taking wing as a playful house music workout powered by an unlikely collaborator in Roger Waters' guitarist Jonathan Wilson. 'Freedom, I've been waiting for you,' concludes Kesha.
Elsewhere, she adds sauce – 'Rev my engine 'til you make it purr' – on racy Euro-pop number Joyride, before turning to her Tennessee roots on Yippee-Ki-Yay, which combines loping dance grooves and country in a similar fashion to Shaboozey's 2024 mega-hit A Bar Song (Tipsy). 'Hose me down at the trailer park,' she sings, and then: 'I'm feeling loose, I'm feeling light, I'm hella smooth like Miller Lite.'
Her habit of falling for the wrong guy ('the bizarre type, lowlife') is also apparent. 'God, I love a hopeless bastard,' she admits on Red Flag, before giving us a tongue-in-cheek index of her not-so-ideal men on Euro-disco number Boy Crazy: 'Bikers and the dumb bros, daddies and the gym hoes.'
It's all very kitschy and catchy, with just enough sonic invention – such as the accordion on Joyride – to prevent the songs from becoming generic, even if Kesha's vocal power is occasionally diminished by auto-tune effects.
But Period finishes strongly. Too Hard, all pillow-soft electronics, is a love song co-written by Kesha's mum Pebe Sebert, a singer-songwriter covered by Dolly Parton in the 1980s, and Cathedral is a rock ballad about moving on from the bad times.
'I died in the hell so I could start living again in the cathedral,' she sings. It's not so much a full stop as the start of a brand new chapter.
Kesha starts a tour on March 11, 2026, at OVO Hydro, Glasgow (axs.com).
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