“This is where you f***ers pushed me/ Don’t be surprised if s*** gets ugly,” warns Kesha on her fifth album, Gag Order. “All the doctors and lawyers cut the tongue out of my mouth,” she sings over the warped piano chords of “Fine Line”. “I’ve been hidin’ my anger but b**** look at me now/ I’m at the top of the mountain with a gun to my head.”
This will be the final album that the 36-year-old pop star releases under contract to Lukasz “Dr Luke” Gottwald’s former label Kemosabe Records. A contract she signed when she was 18. She’s since alleged that, over a decade, Dr Luke “sexually, physically, verbally, and emotionally abused” her “to the point where [she] nearly lost her life”. In 2016, Kesha lost a court battle to be released from that contract. The judge dismissed the case, saying that even if the allegations of sexual assault were accepted as true, the five-year statute of limitations had run out on the two most specific rape accusations, which related to incidents the singer claimed had occurred in 2005 and 2008. Now Dr Luke is countersuing for defamation. He is no longer head honcho at Kemosabe, but will still profit from this record because of the original deals Kesha signed with his publishing company. It’s a grim fact that leaves fans with a dilemma over paying for this music. (Maybe Kesha should set up a separate GoFundMe page so they can remunerate her without giving Dr Luke a cut.)
