Ke$ha Plays for Keeps

By Malcolm Venable

Apr 9 2010

It-girl Ke$ha wields a persona as bold as it is authentic. The singer, whom you heard belting out the hook on Flo Rida’s “Right Round,” is actually the daughter of a true-blue, honest-to-goodness punk rock musician Pebe Sebert, best known for penning the Dolly Parton hit, “Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You.” Sebert trained her children to seize the things they wanted in life, which is one of the reasons the L.A.-born, Nashville-bred Ke$ha has a number of gonzo stories in her mental memory book, like the time she crawled under a fence and snuck into Prince’s Beverly Hills mansion to drop off her demo CD.

That stunt didn’t exactly work — security was promptly called — but the singer has nonetheless found her own way into the business. After a few years of toiling in the L.A. underground, she befriended Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald (Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson), who fell in love with her quirky mix of singing and rap. Dr. Luke took her to RCA, and they signed her in 2009.

Not long after appearing on Flo Rida’s “Right Round,” Ke$ha got her own big hit with “Tik Tok,” an upbeat and playful party jam. The #1 greatest gainer at Top 40, “Tik Tok” became an international smash, hitting the iTunes Top 10 in 12 countries and topping the Billboard Hot 100. The song, she has said, came about after she woke up surrounded by her gorgeous and naked female friends, thinking, “This must be what P. Diddy feels like every morning!” Ke$ha’s other songs are just as outrageous, including “Party at a Rich Dude’s House,” which muses over throwing up in a closet at Paris Hilton’s crib.

It’s clear that Ke$ha’s playing for keeps. And as more and more listeners grab her chart-topping debut album Animal, a high-octane explosion of punk, electro and pop, oozing with free-spirited, wild-child personality, will grab them right back.