Quoting Ke$ha

Positioned as the Next Big Thing in pop music this side of 2010, Ke$ha is living proof that the temporal distinctions we make between eras is nothing if not fuzzy. Ke$ha is both living artifact and hopelessly hip to anyone who has every visited thecobrasnake.com (compare this site to Ke$ha's home page) or absent-mindedly flipped through an Urban Outfitters catalog. With her messy blond hair, ripped tights, vintage t-shirts, and black nail polish, she transports us to 2005, when a new breed of hyper-aware social performance emerged with the help Facebook and the explosion of camera and video components on cell phones. To look at Ke$ha is to experience a time capsule of the last ten years in popular culture, told through the ironic poaching of various cultural signifiers, the most notable of which is the scrilla that punctuates her guttural sounding name: Kesh-uhhh...

Her studied conglomeration of every alternative princess from Corey Kennedy to Uffie reduces Ke$ha to a collection of quotes. Her quotations, and equally plundered quote-ability, are precisely why Ke$ha is the perfect post-modern pop star. She embodies every single cliché of the modern party girl: in Women’s Wear Daily, she declared, “I don’t give a fuck and I’m irreverent.” Ke$ha, consciously or not, posits herself as a direct link to Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan, and Peaches Geldoff through her put-upon "irreverence," which is belied by her carefully choreographed performances and the eyeliner that typically circles her right eye in a sunburst of black smudges, blurring the line between dress-up and personal iconography.

In evoking an attitude that has pervaded the social performance of young people since the inception of the party photo and sites such as Last Night’s Party, Ke$ha fulfills the myth that one’s self-conscious popular representation can become larger than the body in which it is located. Ke$ha is more than, in the words of the Guardian’s Paul Lester, “a rebel in American Apparel”; she’s the embodiment of the sixteen year-olds who shop at American Apparel, hoping to replicate the uneasy brand of exhibitionism found in Dov Chaney’s advertisements.

Ke$ha consolidates an entire decade’s worth of “irrevence” (and hooks, from both Uffie and Lady Gaga) into “TiK ToK,” a song about partying with your crew and the cavity-fighting power of Jack Daniels. Luckily for Ke$ha, consolidation is the cheapest, if not the only, logic for mass production. "TiK ToK" is, as Neda Ulaby and Zoe Chace note on NPR, is effectively the bare-bones structure of what we have come to expect in pop music: shiny beats, relentless rhythm, perky vocals, and, of course, attitude. The song distills the atmosphere of electro-pop music without actually saying anything substantive.

I plan to leave this decade fist held high, fighting a war against pretension - Ke$ha in Rolling Stone

Instead, Ke$ha wraps her substance in bouncy egalitarian sound-bytes that are repeated in dozens of publications. I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve read about her aspirations towards gender equality. Her simplistic position on feminism relies upon the fact that she talks about men the way men have been talking about women in music. Reverse chauvinism is hardly the banner under which any critically minded person would suggest advancing equality, but this is yet another instance of Ke$ha’s ability to distill the salient, exploitative features of contemporary culture. To give credence to her philosophy, the recently resurrected Lilith Fair has announced that Ke$ha will be one of the performers at this year’s festival.

Ke$ha’s simplification of the cultural shifts in presentation and performance that have marked the last decade guarantee her at least fifteen minutes of pop industry fueled fame. Her ability to confront the larger issues that are part of that consildation, such as the simplification of bad girl stereotypes and the consequences of borrowing heavily from the attitudes found in digital marketing and media, will dictate her engagement with the present cultural moment. Her engagement with what is being discussed rather than what has been discussed will be crucial to the future of her career.