Song of the Day 1/16: Kesha, “Tik Tok”
The deadline for whatever happens to TikTok is fast approaching. I don’t use social media, so it won’t affect me directly no matter what happens, but lots of people are worked up about it so it’s all over the news. This might be why when I searched for Kesha, one of the auto-prompt questions that came up was, “Is TikTok named for the Kesha song?”
The company claims it isn’t, but it doesn’t offer any convincing reason it is, either (it supposedly represents a ticking clock, which supposedly alludes to the brevity of the videos, to which, yeah, right). Granted, TikTok didn’t debut until 2016, seven years after the song. But the song is also one of the best-selling digital singles ever after spending nine weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, so it’s not inconceivable that the platform’s Chinese owners would glom onto it (they name it something different in every country).
The song was produced by Łukasz Gottwald, known better as Dr. Luke, one of the Max Martin school of producers we can thank for all pop music sounding exactly the same for the past 15 years. Kesha later accused him of sexual assault, kicking off a series of lawsuits that lasted nearly a decade before the two settled out of court two years ago. The tune is catchy as hell but the lyrics are an immediate turn-off, unless bragging about getting shitfaced and laid is your thing, and we already have rap for that.
It turns out that legal battles with high-powered pop producers can hurt a singer’s career. Kesha’s declined to the point where she played a cruise ship, but she’s now in the middle of yet another comeback attempt. She got some publicity by changing the lyrics “Tik Tok.” Originally, she said she woke up in the morning feeling like P Diddy; now she wakes up in the morning saying “Fuck P Diddy” because of all the allegations of sexual crimes against him. No indication that there’s any self-awareness about how her big hit might have influenced people to drunkenly “party all night” with people like him.
