It was August of 2009. Obama had freshly taken up the presidency after an eight-year Republican reign and social media apps like Instagram and, ironically, TikTok had not yet pervaded the psyche. In fact, Kesha, then Ke$ha, barely eked by with releasing her first solo single before society had fully and willingly entered the matrix. Maybe that’s why the song maintains a certain air of carefree innocence and unmanufactured jubilance about partying that two-minute ditties of the present simply cannot exude with the same authenticity.
While the single was an instant hit, among many underrated things about Kesha and a career that has frequently been written off as a “fluke” (especially by those misogynists who are “Team Dr. Luke”) is the video for “Tik Tok.” Being the track that launched her into the stratosphere as a solo artist (after she was given no credit for carrying Flo Rida’s “Right Round”), “Tik Tok” as a video was extremely important to establishing who Kesha was as a “personality” (sort of like what the “Borderline” video was for Madonna). And who she was (and remains) is someone totally anathema to “the normies.” Read: the “respectable” folk who could remain sober long enough to hold down a steady job and pay a mortgage.
This aura of repugnance-to-the-average that Kesha possessed was made clear in an iconic yet blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene from the video, directed by Syndrome (who had also furnished visuals for Eminem, T-Pain and Estelle featuring Kanye West that year). Opening on Kesha slowly “coming to” in the bathtub at her parents’ house (no matter that she’s no longer in high school), flashes from the drunken shenanigans of the previous night are also briefly cut to, as though to give us a glimpse into her gradually-forming brainwaves bringing her back into her present reality. One she isn’t so eager to stay in as she proceeds to get ready by stumbling back into her cowboy boots after “brushing [her] teeth with a bottle of Jack” (though, sadly, we don’t see the Jack Daniel’s used as toothpaste in the video). Her staggering gait continues as she finds herself in the hallway, briefly staring at a framed picture of her normie family as though trying to place who these people actually are. And how she could possibly “derive” from them. Come to think of it, maybe she’s just in a random person’s home and this isn’t her family at all—she’s pulled a ’96 Robert Downey Jr. passing out in a neighbor’s bed.
Nonetheless, assuming this could be her family, the same sense of not identifying with “this stranger” appears to be true of Kesha’s would-be mother trying to recognize the “party monster” in front of her as she serves pancakes to her other two “good” children, only to drop a plate piled high with a stack onto the floor when she catches sight of her diabolical daughter—the scourge of her womb, apparently. A shrugging, “what’d I do?” Kesha doesn’t make much of the spectacle, or the fact that she has caused offense to this hyper-conventional family. She then prances out into the suburban neighborhood with said family chasing after her as though to make one last-ditch effort at trying to save her from her life of “sin.” In short, from herself.
But, like Miley, Kesha can’t be tamed, and she’s already off on her bicycle with an American flag on the back of it—at which point the aesthetic turns into something decidedly out of a Lana Del Rey video (including the random cuts to scenes in “vintage-y” black and white), before we yet knew Lana Del Rey existed.
Like a modern take on Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” (except without the irony), “Tik Tok” embodies the “Ke$ha lifestyle” of the period, with the use of the dollar sign in her name meant to be tongue-in-cheek as she was a quintessential broke ass millennial (famous songwriter mother or not) before Animal became a hit. She confirmed this much by noting, “We’re all young and broke and it doesn’t matter. We can find clothes on the side of the street and go out and look fantastic, and kill it. If we don’t have a car that doesn’t stop us, because we’ll take the bus. If we can’t afford drinks, we’ll bring a bottle in our purse. It’s just about not letting anything bring you down.” Sounds like the inspiration for Sia’s “Cheap Thrills.”
Upon subsequently borrowing a boom box from a group of Aryan kids on the street, Kesha then takes it with her to chill in an alley as though simply waiting for the night to start. Whereupon she can fully personify the indie sleaze zeitgeist of the moment by appearing in a furry vest, high-heeled gladiator sandals (arbitrarily replacing the cowboy boots), too-thick eyeliner, an American flag bandana tied to her wrist and manifesting confetti galore. But before that time comes, Kesha is picked up by a guy in a gold Trans Am (her favorite) and taken for a joy ride. An outing that quickly leads to getting handcuffed by a cop for no other reason than, presumably, Kesha was having too much fun. For such a thing remains, to this day, an affront to the majority “rulers” who want to see everyone else as miserable as they are. And that ability to enjoy herself persists in being, arguably, the very quality that makes Kesha continue to stand out, as well as a song like “Tik Tok.” Defying anyone who listens to it not to have a good time for once in their drab, dreary lives. A good time that’s real, mind you. Not a “designer” good time created solely for the purposes of displaying it on social media.
In this regard, again, “Tik Tok” might only exist because it burst onto the scene in the final moments before the ersatz had completely started to dominate the social life of The Youth (capitalized because of how “hallowed” a.k.a. coveted such a characteristic is in this society). Now decidedly anti-social thanks to, um, TikTok. A homogenizing entity that, indeed, fortifies the “importance” of being performatively “normal.”
