Kesha
Kesha Rose Sebert grew up in Nashville as the daughter of songwriter Pebe Sebert, absorbing country songcraft before decamping to Los Angeles, where producer Dr. Luke signed her as a teenager. She broke through in 2009 with 'TiK ToK,' a bratty, talk-rapped party anthem that made her a defining voice of turn-of-the-2010s dance-pop, all Auto-Tuned swagger and glitter-caked hedonism. After a bruising legal battle with her producer, she recast herself on 2017's 'Rainbow,' folding the country and rock roots of her upbringing back into her pop.
Kesha has singled out the Beastie Boys as a major influence, telling Newsweek she had always wanted to be like them and aspired to make 'youthful, irreverent anthems,' and calling her debut album 'Animal' a homage to their 'Licensed to Ill.' The mark is in her rap-sung, party-first vocal attitude, where delivery matters more than melody.
listen forCue the yelled, bratty gang-vocal chorus of 'Fight for Your Right,' then Kesha's half-rapped, half-sung verses on 'TiK ToK' — the same snotty, hedonistic swagger, the voice treated as attitude rather than a tune to be carried.
The connection is personal as well as musical: Kesha's mother, songwriter Pebe Sebert, co-wrote 'Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You,' which Dolly Parton took to number one in 1980, and Kesha later recorded the song as a duet with Parton on 'Rainbow.' She cites Parton among the country roots she grew up around and returned to that plainspoken, twangy storytelling once she set the club aside.
listen forPlay Dolly's aching, narrative country vocal on 'Jolene' before Kesha's tongue-in-cheek, banjo-flecked murder ballad 'Hunt You Down' — hear the same Nashville-rooted storyteller's voice, spinning a whole tale from a single fraught relationship.
Kesha has named Madonna among her formative influences, and the debt runs through her provocative, dancefloor-first pop and her instinct for reinvention — building empowerment anthems on a stomping electronic pulse the way Madonna did across her club records.
listen forDrop the strobing four-on-the-floor pulse of Madonna's 'Music' next to 'We R Who We R' — both build a defiant, chant-along club anthem out of a hammering synth beat and a simple, endlessly repeated self-affirming hook.