Each Music Monday will be formatted as followed: an overview/ my opinion on their said career, followed by the ranking of their top 5 songs. No artist is without flaws, their worst three songs will also be judged and ripped to shreds.
As a reminder, this is not going to be a series where I list no-name songs off an artist’s shitty second album that’ll you’ll hear occasionally in an urban coffee shop. We only grade hits here. I’m not looking for songs that have the best underlying message. I’m not looking for songs that represent the artist’s struggle and triumph over something shitty that happened to them. I don’t care about any of that. We are only ranking the cream of the crop, the pinnacle of an artist’s success. Before you ask, I will not be ranking The Beatles’ songs, as I do not want to tarnish my blog with overrated garbage. If you have a problem with that, or my rankings, and want to make your criticisms known, you can email all of your concerns to VinnieWontCheckThis@gmail.com. Prior versions of this series can be found here.
So with that, let’s get started.
Kesha Rose Sebert was born in Los Angeles, California on March 1, 1987. Due to her mother being a songwriter Kesha was exposed to music at a young age. In 1991 her family moved to Nashville for KeshMom’s career. KeshMa (I’m tweaking the name for Kesha’s mother, bare with me) frequently brought Kesha and her brothers along to recording studios and encouraged Kesha to sing when she noticed Kesha’s vocal talent. Due to her unconventional style (such as homemade purple velvet pants and purple hair) she claimed she didn’t fit in with the other students. She became a straight A student, she actually got a perfect score on her SATs. Despite having her picks at some of the best universities in the country, she instead opted to skip college to pursue a music career. Her mother’s connections helped Kesha get discovered and at 18 she moved to LA to sign her first record label in 2005. While furthering her career in studio, Kesha earned her living as a waitress. While struggling to get by, she began stylizing her name as ‘Ke$ha’, explaining the dollar sign as an ironic gesture. Her big break came in 2009 when she appeared on rapper Flo Rida’s number-one single Right Round. The collaboration happened by accident; she had walked into a recording session for the song with Flo-Rida. Flo-Rida wanted a female voice for the song. However, she is not credited for her feature on the song and did not collect any money for the part. She also refused to appear in the video, explaining that she wanted to make a name for herself on her own terms. I’m a big bet-on-yourself guy and while it worked out in the end, and I get the pride thing but C’Mon, i would have appeared in that video. The appearance on Right Round motivated Kesha to finish her debut album, which she spent the better part of 6 years working on. For the album, she wrote approximately 200 songs which she trimmed down to the final 14 songs that appeared on the album. Animal was released on January 1, 2010 and the album did as well as you’d like a debut album to do. All four singles went top ten on the charts, hitting number one (Tik Tok), number four (Your Love is My Drug), number 7 (Blah Blah Blah), and number eight (Take it Off). Tik Tok went on to become one the most successful selling singles of all time, selling 18 million copies. She then embarked on tour with Rihanna, serving as her opening act on Rihanna’s Last Girl on Earth Tour. Towards the end of 2010, Kesha released an EP consisting of some of those 200 songs she had written for her album. The EP, Cannibal, had another song hit number one (We R Who We R) and another in the top ten (Blow). She was also featured on the top ten 3Oh!3 song, My First Kiss, giving her two number one songs, a top five, and four top ten hit in a single calendar year. In February 2011 Kesha embarked on her first tour, which was a massive success, selling out across three continents. In November 2012, her highly anticipated sophomore album, Warrior was released. The album was fine, had some fun bops. including a top two hit (Die Young) and another song go number 25 (C’Mon). Kesha then did what any smart artist who wants to hit the top of the charts and make a boat load of money along the way and announced a co-heading tour with Pitbull in February 2013. While these two certified hit makers were touring together they collaborated on the song, Timber, which they released in October 2013. What a tour de force this song was, it sold nearly 20 million copies, and hit number one in 13 countries, including the US. Due to a very public legal dispute with a producer who made a ton of her songs this was the last time we heard Kesha for almost 4 years. I’m not gonna take about the lawsuit because we only grades hits here but it was pretty messy. In August 2017 she made her triumph return to music when she released her third album Rainbow. The album was a pivot from her electro-pop sound as this song dug deep and touched on her personal struggles. The album was met by acclaim from critics, produced a top 25 song (Praying) and was nominated for 2 Grammy’s (the first of her career). She spent the next couple years touring before spending 2019 working on her fourth album, High Road, which was released on January, 31, 2020. The album hasn’t charted anything yet but while I don’t think it will, that could change.
Kesha will never reach the heights of her peak again but I don’t think she wants to nor do I think the industry will allow it. Her personal struggles took a toll on her and now I think she’s just going to make music that makes her happy, which is fine. While it means less hits going forward, she left us an array to properly grade. I will also address the elephant in the room with these rankings – Timber is technically a feature so it is disqualified from the rankings. Tragic, I know as it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. The good news is that while Timber will not be number one on this list, it is number one on Pitbull’s List. and I also ranked it as the number one song of 2014 when I did my end of decade review. Most importantly, it is number one in our hearts.
Toughest Omission- C’mon: this song is no doubt in the top 5 if it charted high enough, it absolutely slaps and can change your entire mood after one listen.
5. Your Love is My Drug: I don’t care what you say, Kesha ending this song with “i like your beard” is more impactful than The Beatles entire discography.
4. Blow: Is this song about a really awesome party or a terrorist? I guess only one person knows the answer to that.
3. Die Young: If your parents are anti-vaxxers, this song is your national anthem.
2. Take it Off : What a top notch song, this is one of my favorites. For whatever reason I always thought these lyrics were relatable. I have a joke that would probably be a good tweet but I’ll share it here.
“Kesha: there’s a place downtown, where the freaks all come around it’s a hole in the wall, it’s a dirty free for all.
17 year old a Vinnie as he drove around the suburbs of Chicago in his mom’s Ford Explorer: totally”
1. Tik Tok: This song did more for my generation than the United States government ever could. Never mind being one of the top selling debut singles, this is one of the best selling songs period. Kesha came out of the gate on an absolute rocket ship. We started the 2010s decade with Tik Tok and we started the 2020s decade with tiktok – talk about a step backwards.
Tik Tok is huge now but I was always a vine guy, so enjoy a couple of my favorites.
Your Turn
If you had a blog and were to rank every Kesha song that hit top 20 on the charts, what are your top 5?
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Album |
| Tik Tok | 2009 | 1 | Animal |
| Blah Blah Blah | 2010 | 7 | Animal |
| Your Love Is My Drug | 2010 | 4 | Animal |
| Take It Off | 2010 | 8 | Animal |
| We R Who We R | 2010 | 1 | Cannibal |
| Blow | 2011 | 7 | Cannibal |
| Die Young | 2012 | 2 | Warrior |
Vin'sane Thoughts 