Kesha was born on March 1, 1987, in Los Angeles, California. Her big break came from an uncredited and unpaid cameo on rapper Flo Rida's 2009 No. 1 hit "Right Round." Soon after, she landed a record contact with RCA and released her first single, "Tik Tok." The party anthem developed quite a following. Her debut album, Animal, reached the top of the charts after its release in January 2010.
QUOTES
"One of my first memories is my mom telling me, 'If you want something, just take it.'"
– Kesha
Early Life
Singer and songwriter Ke$ha was born Kesha Rose Sebert on March 1, 1987, in Los Angeles, California. She was exposed to music at an early age through her mother Pebe, a songwriter. Her mother's biggest songwriting success was "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You," which was a hit for Joe Sun and Dolly Parton.
The first few years of Kesha's life were a struggle for her family. Her mother had difficulty earning enough to support Kesha and her older brother. "We were on welfare and food stamps," the artist explained on her website. "One of my first memories is my mom telling me, 'If you want something, just take it.'" When she was 4, Kesha moved to Nashville with her family, where her mother had landed a songwriting contract.
Sometimes tagging along with her mother, Kesha spent a lot of time in recording studios during her early adolescence. Her mother encouraged her interest in singing, allowing Kesha to work on some of her song demos. Kesha also went to a music school, where she learned about songwriting. Deep in the heart of the country music scene, she was inspired by the likes of Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline.
Pursuing a Career in Music
At 17, Kesha left high school to pursue a music career. She changed her name to Ke$ha and moved to Los Angeles to work with producer Dr. Luke, who had worked on hit singles for Katy Perryand Kelly Clarkson among others. "I thought her voice was distinctive, and I fell in love with her personality," Dr. Luke explained to Entertainment Weekly. "She had the same sass and irreverence she has now."
Ke$ha was determined to break into the business. According to one story, she paid off a gardener to get inside music legend Prince's house to leave one of her demos for him. She landed a few gigs as a back-up vocalist as well, performing on songs by Britney Spears andParis Hilton. But her big break came from an uncredited and unpaid cameo on rapper Flo Rida's 2009 No. 1 hit "Right Round." She toldAllure magazine that she wasn't upset about not receiving any payment for the song. "You have to pay your dues," she explained.
Commercial Breakthrough
Soon after her work with Flo Rida, Ke$ha landed a record contact with RCA. She released her first single, "Tik Tok," later that year. The party anthem developed quite a following, soon becoming one of the most downloaded songs in America, and then reaching the top of the Billboard pop charts in January 2010.
Because she has attracted many young fans, Ke$ha has been criticized for some of her lyrics, especially those focused on drinking and alcohol. "I'm not a babysitter," the singer said.
"It's their parents' responsibility to take care of them." For Ke$ha, her life provides much of the inspiration for her songs. "I'll go out with my friends and get rowdy . . . I'm not sorry, and I will write about it."
Her debut album, Animal, reached the top of the charts after its release in January 2010. In addition to "Tik Tok," Ke$ha has scored two more Top 10 hits: "Blah Blah Blah" and "Your Love Is My Drug."
2009–11: Animal and Cannibal
After failing to negotiate with Lava Records and Atlantic Records in 2009, Kesha signed a multi-album deal with RCA Records through Dr. Luke's imprint. Having spent the previous six years working on material for her debut album, she began putting finishing touches to the album with Luke and Max Martin. For the album, she wrote 200 songs. The album was executive produced by Luke, who produced the majority of the songs with Martin, and producers Benny Blanco and Ammo. The album is primarily of the electropop genre with beats and synths, marking a shift in sound for Luke from then on from his signature pop-rock productions. Animal debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 when it was released in January 2010. It was certified platinum in the US and had sold two million albums worldwide by September. The lead single of the album, "Tik Tok", broke the record in the United States for the highest single week sales, selling 610,000 digital downloads, the highest ever by a female artist since tracking began in 2003. It spent nine weeks at number one and became the longest running number one by a female artist on her debut single since Debby Boone and "You Light Up My Life" in 1977. Since 2013, "Tik Tok" has sold about 14 million copies, becoming the second best-selling single in the digital history – being the most sold single in history by a female solo artist. Subsequent singles from the album, "Blah Blah Blah", "Your Love Is My Drug" and "Take It Off" achieved similar commercial success each reaching the top ten in Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Kesha was also featured on two top ten singles by musician Taio Cruz and electro-pop duo 3OH!3.
Kesha's deliberately unpolished aesthetic and juvenile stage persona, which she described as her own personality "times ten", quickly made her a deeply polarizing figure. Some of her critics found her output to be unsophisticated, while others felt that she was manufactured and lacked credibility. Kesha's former managers from DAS Communications Inc. filed a lawsuit later that month, seeking $14 million from Kesha and $12 million from Luke for commissions on her RCA Records deal, alleging that she had extended the deadline for them to get her a major record label contract and squeezed them out of her career under pressure from Dr. Luke. Kesha launched her own lawsuit in October, citing the California-exclusive Talent Agencies Act and asking the California Labor Commissioner to declare her contract with DAS void because it had acted as an unlicensed talent agent while procuring work for her in California, where only licensed agents can do so. The case was settled in 2012 before the release of her second album. Kesha held a benefit concert on June 16, 2010 where all proceeds went to aid victims of the May 2010 Tennessee floods from her hometown Nashville. She raised close to $70,000 from the event. She was a supporting act on the summer North American leg of pop star Rihanna's Last Girl on Earth Tour and was awarded Best New Act at the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards.
In November 2010, Animal was re-released with a companion extended play, Cannibal. The lead single taken from Cannibal, "We R Who We R" debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. With two number ones and four top ten hits, Kesha was named Hot 100 Artist of 2010 by Billboard, with "Tik Tok" topping the year-end chart. The follow-up single from Cannibal, "Blow" charted in the top ten on the Hot 100. As of June 2011, she has accumulated almost 21 million digital single downloads in the US alone. In February 2011, Kesha embarked on her first headlining world tour, Get Sleazy. The tour was expanded with a summer leg due to the first leg selling out and spanned three continents. Kesha also co-wrote the song "Till the World Ends" for American popstar Britney Spears and she was featured on the remix of the song along with rapper Nicki Minaj. After meeting Kesha at the 2010 Grammy Awards and guesting at a number of her concerts, rock singerAlice Cooper asked her to write lyrics for and vocally perform as a devil character for their duet track, "What Baby Wants", on Cooper's album, Welcome 2 My Nightmare.
Kesha was named rights group Humane Society of the United States's first global ambassador for animal rights, for which she is expected to bring attention to such practices as cosmetics testing on animals and shark finning. She also appeared alongside rock singer Iggy Pop in a campaign for PETA, protesting the clubbing of baby seals in Canada and later wrote on behalf of the organization to fast food chain McDonald's over the conditions of their slaughterhouses.
2012–14: Warrior, My Crazy Beautiful Life, Dr. Luke controversy and rehab stint
Kesha's second studio album, Warrior was released on November 30, 2012. She began writing for the album while on her own headlining tour in 2011. The album featured productions from her main collaborators Dr. Luke and Max Martin, as well as a song by Wayne Coyne, the lead singer of the alternative band The Flaming Lips. Coyne had reached out to Kesha for a collaboration after hearing that she was a fan of the band. Besides working on Kesha's album, they recorded the song "2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)" for the band's album, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. To coincide with the release of the album, Kesha released an illustrated autobiography, My Crazy Beautiful Life through Touchstone Books in November 2012. The first single taken from Warrior was "Die Young". The song debuted at number thirteen on Billboard Hot 100 and eventually peaked at number 2.
The song also charted across Europe and the Anglosphere and reached the top ten in Australia, Canada, and Belgium. "C'Mon", the album's second single, under-performed commercially; only peaking at 27 on Billboard Hot 100 and ending her string of top ten hits on the chart. Despite this, "C'Mon" continued Kesha's streak of top ten hits (with nine) on the Mainstream Top 40 Pop Songs chart graphed by Billboard. In March 2013, Kesha announced the Warrior Tour, which will support the album. The North American leg was co-headlined with rapper Pitbull. Kesha's third single fromWarrior, "Crazy Kids", was released in April 2013 and also under-performed, peaking at number 40 on the Hot 100, number 19 on Mainstream Top 40, yet did achieve massive success in South Korea and Belgium peaking at 2, and 5 in those countries respectively. A TV series documentary, Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life began airing on MTV in April 2013.
Following the underperformances of singles "C'Mon" and "Crazy Kids", much of the blame was placed on Kesha's longtime collaborator Dr. Luke. In September 2013, a Kesha fan set up a petition to "free" Kesha from Dr. Luke's management and accused Luke of "stunting" Kesha's creative growth as an artist. The petition currently has over 10,000 signatures. Suspicion first aroused after the controversy involved with "Die Young", which was axed from several radio stations following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. She claimed she was "forced" to sing Die Young, but later retracted the statement. It was later revealed on My Crazy Beautiful Life that she had little creative control ofWarrior, and was also stated that "Machine Gun Love", her favorite song that she had written, was omitted from the record against her wishes. Kesha had written over seventy songs that were intended for Warrior but Dr. Luke scrapped many of them. The co-director of My Crazy Beautiful Life, Steven Greenstreet, tweeted a picture in November of front row fans at one of Kesha's concerts carrying banners labelled, "F**k Dr. Luke." Kesha's mother Pebe blamed Dr. Luke for her lack of creative input and said that she hoped that Kesha would be dropped from RCA Records. In July 2013, The Flaming Lips announced that they hoped to release a full-length collaborative album with Kesha, called Lipsha, although it was eventually cancelled in the winter of the same year. Kesha sent a message to a fan expressing how it was out of her control and that she wanted to release the material, even for free, saying that she didn't care about the money. On October 7, 2013, Kesha and Pitbullreleased a collaboration, "Timber", which was an international commercial success and became Kesha's third number-one and her eleventh top 10 single on the Hot 100 chart.
On January 3, 2014, it was announced that Kesha had checked into Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Center, a rehab facility in Lemont, Illinois for eating disorder treatment. Following the announcement, TMZ revealed that Dr. Luke was allegedly to blame for her placement in treatment, asserting that Luke had "ragged" on her over the weight she had gained between her Get Sleazy Tour and her 2012 album Warrior and its preceding tour. Kesha's mother Pebe Sebert confirmed in an interview that the eating disorder Kesha was suffering with is bulimia nervosaand that she had been struggling with it ever since she was signed. She also claimed that Dr. Luke was partly the reason behind the development of Kesha's eating disorder, saying that he had told her to lose weight after he signed her and allegedly compared the shape of her body to a refrigerator, which caused Kesha's disorder to worsen. On January 15, Sebert explained to People magazine that Kesha's disorder was possibly fatal and that her doctor called it "a miracle" that she survived after starving herself.
2014-present: Upcoming third studio album
On March 6, after spending two months in rehab, Kesha confirmed via Twitter that she has completed her treatment and is currently "working on tons of new music". It was also confirmed that she is choosing to use her birth name in favor of her previous moniker, using the letter "s" instead of the symbol "$."