I've been through hell and back,” Kesha sings on her new album, and even casual listeners are likely to know the circumstances of her trip.
Three years ago, this pop star famous for her bleary 2009 smash “Tik Tok,” filed a bombshell lawsuit against Lukasz Gottwald, aka Dr. Luke, the producer and songwriter with whom she’d collaborated for nearly a decade. Kesha accused Dr. Luke of physical and emotional abuse and said he’d raped her; the producer responded with a lawsuit of his own in which he characterized Kesha’s claims as an attempt to extort him during a contract renegotiation.
Since then, the legal fight has proceeded agonizingly slowly, with each grim development attracting widespread attention. What wasn’t clear until now is that Kesha feels she made it back from hell.
For all the public scrutiny of her and Dr. Luke’s battle, Kesha has been largely unheard throughout her ordeal — the result, she says, of a restrictive agreement with the producer that effectively silenced her. In 2016 she toured for the first time in years but relied on old songs and pointed cover versions of well-known tunes like Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.”
By design or by necessity, Kesha’s story seemed to have stalled, and in a state of misery she was allegedly barred from explaining.
Kesha - Hymn (Audio).mp4
She’s finally moving again with “Rainbow,” her first album since “Warrior” in 2012. Due Friday, it’s a vivid account of a woman’s unwanted confrontation with a powerful tormentor — “a bogeyman under my bed putting crazy thoughts inside my head,” as she puts it in “Learn to Let Go” — as well as her determination to leave the resulting damage behind.
“I could fight forever, but life’s too short,” she declares to open the record in “Bastards,” and what’s remarkable is that she makes that conclusion sound like a victory, not a defeat.
“Rainbow” is full of motion. In song after song, Kesha — who broke through with “Tik Tok’s” knowing depiction of twentysomething indolence — is looking forward, putting more and more distance between her and the trauma she refers to in the song “Praying” as “the flames.”
“I’m walking on air, kicking my blues,” she sings in “Boots,” while “Hymn” insists, “We just ride, we just cruise / Living like there’s nothing left to lose.” (“Praying,” “Hymn,” all these mentions of hell: If you’re detecting a religious streak on “Rainbow,” it’s definitely here.)
The album closes with “Spaceship,” in which she says her people are coming to take her away: “Lord knows this planet feels like a hopeless place / Thank God I’m going back home to outer space.”
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