Album Review: Kesha Is Having Fun Again On 'High Road'

The pop icon’s fourth album is at once a return to the sleazy club-pop that made her famous and a continued exploration of her country roots. 

Written by Laiken Neumann

Photo courtesy of Dana Trippe

After over a decade in the industry scene, Kesha (Kesha Sebert, formerly known as Ke$ha) is a music veteran, and High Road is a project of self-fulfillment. 

Ten years ago, Kesha stepped onto the mainstream pop scene with Animal, an album that oozed dance-pop beats and auto-tune on hits like “TiK ToK,” “Your Love is My Drug,” and “Take It Off.” It simultaneously crowned Kesha as the queen of sleaze and popularized the shameless declaration of ‘trashiness’ that would influence other artists’ fall from the public’s idea of morality, namely Miley Cyrus.

Since Animal, however, Kesha has faced a long, hard road. In addition to battling an eating disorder, she’s been involved in a still-ongoing court battle with her former producer Dr. Luke (Lukasz Gottwald) to free her from her contract with his record company due to emotional and sexual abuse. Amidst this personal turmoil, she recorded tracks for her previous album, Rainbow, while at rehab in 2014 and throughout the trial against Dr. Luke. She finally released the album in 2017. Needless to say, Kesha doesn’t have a lot to lose, and she takes advantage of that on High Road.

The album sees Kesha become the artist she’s always meant to be. She emerges from the dust in a state of nirvana, and it’s an unequivocally fun piece of work, even if a few tracks are overly ambitious. Where Rainbow saw her delve into rock-inspired tracks and folk-pop while maintaining a cohesive sound, High Road occasionally struggles from the ongoing conflict between the sound that made her famous and her country roots.

The album opens with two tracks, “Tonight” and “My Own Dance,” that fall victim to overproduction as they attempt to find the balance between auto-tuned talk-singing and Kesha’s vocal range. Additionally, the video-game studded synthesizer of “Birthday Suit,” a later track, is so uncertain that it’s difficult to tell whether its overcommitting to its campy theme or failing to stick to it. Despite production flaws, Kesha fills in the cracks with her effortlessly fun lyrics, simulating the same feeling one gets looking at this photo of Kesha hanging out with Nicholas Cage, Marilyn Manson, and Alex Wolff earlier this year — one of mingling discomfort, intrigue, and entertainment.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

However, when Kesha strays away from elaborate production, she expands on musical themes she explored in Rainbow by embracing the duality of brazen club-pop and a softer folk-pop tone. 

“Shadow,” a song she collaborated on with her mother, country singer-songwriter Pebe Sebert, reveals a hint of twang, but Kesha doesn’t sacrifice her shameless lyrics; she’s still “tripping in the desert with [her] best friends” in the album’s first emotional ballad. She carries this over to the irrevocably fun acoustic track “Cowboy Blues” that ponders missed connections through sha-la-la-las and big questions like: “Do you ever lie in bed with your three cats / and get obsessed with some boy you met / one time three years ago in Nashville / and you can’t remember his last name?”

Photo courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment

Some of Kesha’s confidence takes the form of aggressively positive, borderline bubblegum pop songs, like in the handclaps of “Chasing Thunder” or the soaring vocals (and handclaps) of “Raising Hell (feat. Big Freedia).” However, it’s Kesha’s refusal to compromise any parts of herself that convinces you that she’s earned the right to feel good on these tracks, handclaps and all. 

By this point, Kesha isn’t afraid to walk the lines of genre and sometimes, she succeeds. “BFF (feat. Wrabel)” sees her bordering dream-pop with its airy chimes and sparse backing — a welcome change from some of the overwhelming tracks. The circus-inspired horns of “Potato Song (Cuz I Want To),” though at first a little jarring and reminiscent of Pink’s 2008 track “Funhouse,” are just as bold and brash as Kesha’s insistence that she wants to run away and grow potatoes on a farm. It’s the ultimate carefree anthem that screams relatability in a way that isn’t always laid out so directly in pop music.

She even includes “Honey,” an acoustic, R&B-influenced track that sounds straight out of the early aughts. Addressing a friendship failed over a guy, Kesha fesses “It’s girl code, baby girl / and you broke the golden rule / so I guess I’ll see you never, so bye-bye.” It’s melodic chorus and spoken verses embody an underlying anger that she has clearly made peace with. Here, again, we see Kesha’s self-conviction carry her to resolution both emotionally and musically.

High Road is perhaps best embodied by “Kinky (feat. Ke$ha).” The verses emanate Animal-esque whispered vocals, and the chorus is sprinkled with dreamy elements — all while Kesha chimes sex-positive phrases that acknowledge consent, like “As long as its not a secret, we can keep it kinky.” On the track, Kesha features her pre-Rainbow moniker Ke$ha, letting us know that Kesha isn’t a total departure from Ke$ha; the queen of sleaze is reclaiming her crown, only this time, with her given name.