Stays True to Her Roots

14 藝文新聞 F E A T U R E S THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES Rising star stays true to her roots America’s latest pop princess, Ke$ha, is about to strike it rich. But the girl they’re calling the new Lady Gaga hasn’t always had it easy BY ELIZabeth Day THE OBSERVER, LONDON ow do you pronounce a name that is spelled single mother, Pebe Sebert (“It’s pronounced Pee- with a dollar sign? I ask because I am Bee, like peanut butter,” she explains helpfully) H about to meet Ke$ha, this season’s hottest was a songwriter for country artists including Dolly pop poppet, a 22-year-old tousled blonde who is Parton and would often take her children — Ke$ha so volcanically trendy that she has already been has two brothers, Lagan, 28, and Louis, 10 — to the compared with Madonna and the Beastie Boys, recording studio while she worked. despite only just having released her UK debut single. “My mother taught me how to write,” Ke$ha But who cares when she acts the part of wild- says. When I was younger, she was always, like, eyed rock star so effectively? Today, she is wearing ‘Don’t write fake stuff. People can tell if it’s not tiny cut-off denim shorts. Her feet are bare, her real.’ I’ve stuck to that the whole way through.” thin brown arms weighed down by heavy metallic It was a happy but impoverished upbringing. bracelets and her fingernails slicked with black For a while, the family relied on welfare and food polish. Her mascara is mussed-up and she speaks stamps. “One of my first memories was of my with a throatiness that hints at a life of parties mother saying, ‘If you want something at Target on the tour bus. “I could drink a pirate under the [the budget American chainstore], you have to take table,” she admits. “But last night wasn’t that late. It it,’” she says. “It was a Kitty Cat stuffed animal. I was only, like, 2am.” don’t remember if I took it or not. I was about 3 or Ke$ha’s first album, Animal, out early next year, 4 at the time but I was happy.” is filled with what one critic calls “turbo-charged At 17, she was set to go to the prestigious attitudinal electro-shock.” People are already Barnard College to study psychology and calling her the new Lady Gaga. comparative religion — until the music producer Dr Yes, Ke$ha is cool; so hip, in fact, that she feels Luke (who had previously worked with Kelis and no need to be constrained by boringly conventional Britney Spears) rang her house wanting to sign her things like the alphabet. Is the dollar sign meant to up after having heard her material. “I quit school be taken as an ironic comment on the greed of the and moved to LA, and since then I’ve forgotten music industry? I wonder. And did she remember everything about Pythagorean theorem.” to change it into sterling when she flew into Her mother supported her decision. “The most London? “The dollar sign, to be honest, was me amazing part of her parenting was allowing me taking the piss out of being broke,” she says in the to do what I needed to do. She would say, ‘You Tennessee twang of her native Nashville. Earlier can drink. Don’t drive. You can have sex. Wear this year, when Ke$ha (pronounced Keh-sha) was a condom.’ That’s why I have stayed in check so an aspiring singer-songwriter, scraping a living in much.” Does she ever wish her upbringing had Los Angeles by waitressing and writing songs for been more conventional? “No way. She cared about other artists, a producer suggested she provide the right stuff.” vocals for the Flo Rida cover of Right Round. Her mother gave her “a very strong sense of The song became a worldwide hit, reaching No who and what I am. Before I make any decision, I 1 in five countries, but Ke$ha never saw a cent. make sure it’s with the right intention. They wanted “I would hear my voice everywhere — I’d walk to use one of my songs for a fast-food commercial into a movie and it would be playing. I’d walk into and I didn’t think it was appropriate, so I said no, Walgreens, the grocery store, and it was playing, at and it was for a lot of money.” Was it McDonald’s? a time when I didn’t even have enough money to “I can’t say,” she replies with an impish smile. buy my groceries in, like, the dollar store. “My mom’s a badass ... she has balls. You need “My friends and I would go to this bar where if that in this industry, in this world, to stand up for you bought one shot of tequila, you got free tacos. what you believe in. She taught me that you don’t We were sitting there, my song was playing, and my need anybody else to validate anything. She wanted friend said, ‘Whatever. You don’t have any money. a child, she had me, she didn’t want a man to tell This is as good as it’s going to get.’ And she was her when and what to do. I think that’s badass. right. One of my favorite memories in my entire She’s a strong woman, a total hippie.” life is sitting in that crappy bar with my friends Ke$ha says she did not miss having a father eating free tacos. There is no correlation between around and is not bothered that she does not know happiness and amounts of money.” who he is. When Ke$ha first moved to Los Angeles, Financial security is not something Ke$ha her mother sent her off with an introduction to a will have to worry about for much longer. TiK man whom Pebe said was “probably” her father. ToK, her brazenly irreverent first single, is at No “He said I could stay with him and have this father/ 5 in the US charts and has already been No 1 in daughter thing. Then I met him at the airport and Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It tells the I instantly knew, ‘There’s no way you’re my dad.’ I story of “an epic night out, just tearing it down was, like, ‘Shit,’ I mean, you just know if someone with my best friends” (sample lyric: “Before I is your contributor to your being of life.” She leave, I brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack”). Has pauses. “But I moved in with him anyway because she actually used Jack Daniel’s as a mouthwash? I didn’t know anyone else in LA.” Apparently, “I absolutely have,” she says with a grin. “My he spent most of his time sitting in an armchair music is fun, kind of cheeky.” playing video games. But there is something of a message in there, With fortuitous timing, Ke$ha met a boy — “it too, albeit buried deep beneath the layers of was love at first sight” — and moved in with bubblegum electro-pop. And, in person, Ke$ha is him for the next four years, during which time smarter than her music might lead you to believe. she wrote songs for other artists, worked on her In Boots and Boys, for instance, she makes a point album and got fired from her job as a waitress of singing about the opposite sex in the same way from several restaurants. “I’m too emotional,” she that male performers have traditionally done about explains. “People would be rude and I would start women — namely about how their “junk” might crying. Weird energy freaks me out.” look once divested of clothes. “It’s time they got a She also found the time to meet her idol, Prince taste of their own medicine,” she says, sipping on — by breaking into his house. “I’d been in LA an oversize mug of tea. “People are shocked by it, about a year and it was three in the afternoon on but if I were Guns N’ Roses or Van Halen, no one a Tuesday. I remember it was a very random day.” would be surprised. Or a rapper — look at all those Ke$ha drove to Prince’s house, only to be confronted songs on the radio that are, like, ‘Girl go up and by a security gate. “I decided to wedge my body down the pole.’” She curls her lip contemptuously. under the gate but I didn’t quite fit.” She had to bribe “I mean, dance for me dudes!” a passing gardener US$5 to pull her through. Then Does she get frustrated by the double standard? she walked up the driveway — “which was laced “Totally. But it’s life. I understand I’m supposed to with purple velvet” — before discovering that his be feminine and dainty, but I’m not. There are two front door had been left unlocked. “What would sides to the coin. People are more impressed with you do?” she shrieks. “You would go in! It’s like a things that I do because they almost treat you as personal invitation from fate.” if you’re handicapped if you’re a woman ... people Once inside, she took the elevator upstairs can be impressed that I can play a few chords on to discover Prince playing his guitar down the the guitar,” she says with a guffaw.

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