Hi, everyone. Hairthony Cuttano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Kesha album, Period.

West Coast pop singer and songwriter, Ms. Kesha Sebert. She is back with her sixth full-length LP. And just as a reminder, her debut album, Animal, turns 15 this year. I guess for Kesha, that is cause for rekindling some nostalgic vibes, or at least that's what it feels like at this point.

Let me take you back to the early 2010s when Kesha was a new face in the mainstream. Electro fusions reigned supreme, as Lady Gaga, Katie Perry, and Nicki Minaj were dropping game-changing albums and singles. It's a wave that Kesha's sound fit into very snuggly with singles like "Blah, Blah, Blah", and "Tik Tok", as well as "Your Love is My Drug". But Kesha didn't merely just blend into this trend to be forgotten. I would actually argue she turned every aspect of it up to 11 and became one of its most definitive voices, not only because her debut nailed the energetic hooks and over-the-top electroproduction and embrace of autotune. But on top of that, Kesha brought a brash personality and hot girl swagger that, in my opinion, was unparalleled coiled.

A lot of it was showcased through these really unhinged and braggadocious rap verses. That was the result of combining elements of pop and hip hop and electronic music. A combination I wouldn't say she pioneered per se. There were contemporary artists you could compare her to, or even pioneers such as Uffie as well as Peaches, that for sure shared a lot in common with her sound. But Kesha mainstreamed these ideas in a way that no other artist did. Her sound, her style really made her a force to be reckoned with, and she beat the anticipation that her popularity would be short-lived pretty quickly as she dropped the Cannibal EP, a remix album, a sophomore record as well that also brought more hits.

And Kesha was really riding high, hitting a peak of popularity at this point. She had more music on the way, a collab project with Flaming Lips that never saw the light of day. Also an MTV documentary, too. But pretty much immediately after all of this, Kesha's career went into a pretty dark period, not only due to her checking into rehab for bulimia, but she also filed a lawsuit against her former producer, Dr. Luke, bringing allegations of sexual assault and battery, harassment, among other things.

It's something we've covered on the YouTube channels and have referenced repeatedly in recent reviews of Kesha's music. And obviously, being legally at odds with the producer who you are contractually tied to is going to slow your creative process and your output down. It would be several more years before we would see Kesha's next record, Rainbow, and it would take even longer for her to reach a settlement with Dr. Luke in 2023, one that absolved Luke of any wrongdoing because Kesha just didn't really recall what happened.

Now, obviously, I don't personally have any further insight into what led to that and what happened to spur the lawsuit originally. But this joint statement between the both of them obviously reads like an agreed-upon PR message meant to sweep all of this under the rug and allow Kesha and Luke to each go their own separate ways.

Now, this period of time in which Kesha is engaged in this suit with Luke saw her releasing some of her most personal, dramatic, and dynamic records to date, even a little experimental to a degree in the case of Gag Order. And honestly, I enjoyed hearing this new side of Kesha through these records. I found her music to get a lot more mature and adventurous in some cases.

But breaking new ground and processing trauma is not exactly the main focus of Period over here. Bluntly put, this record is very much once again about turning the fuck up and essentially Kesha getting back to what makes Kesha Ke$ha, with a dollar sign.

Now, I wouldn't say she ever really truly abandoned what made her original and special and specific as an artist over the course of her last three albums. I mean, after all, Rainbow, Gag Order, and High Road all contain tracks such as "Woman", as well as "Kinky", as well as "Only Love Can Save Us Now". But on Period, Kesha is really making an even grander commitment to doing too much and being over the top once again, with more dance beats and ridiculous rhymes and girly vocal fried rap verses than you can handle.

She pretty much indicated this would be the direction of this record last year with the release of the single "Joyride". Admittedly, it's a track that took me a while to warm up to fully because it's just a lot, between its bumping club beats and Romani accordion hits. It's so Euro, it's so trashy, but it's also so addictive. And Kesha is nothing if not insanely confident and eclectic and sometimes a little obnoxious in the best way, which I would also say is the case for the "Yippie-Ki-Yay" single, too. A track that I also couldn't really stand on first listen, but the album version without T-Pain, I feel like, is a easier to stomach. His appearance does really push things a bit into the red for me. But even if I'm not head over heels for this track, on some level, I do think it is a master class in quirky genre fusions with the booming pop anthem/country mixture going on here. It really is an example of being gaudy as an esthetic.

And upon first listen, I really did love the track, "Boy Crazy". It is a primo piece of tight, peppy synth pop with a nostalgic '80s feel to it that Kesha and her collaborators on this one just nailed perfectly.

But beyond this, the deeper I dug into this record, the more I found it to be disappointingly scant. And the boldest and most memorable moments on the project were pretty concentrated around the teaser tracks.

Now, given that Kesha is returning to form a little bit on this project, I did expect going into it that we would get some 2010 vibes once again. But I didn't think she was basically going to be subjecting us to what sounds like a Katy Perry leftover on "The One", or attempting a bland piece of millennial, motivational poster pop on the track "Delusional" – this thing is a few shades away from "Fight Song" or some annoyingly righteous self-love anthem that you put on because you're feeling a little insecure over a breakup.

I can respect, though, Kesha's trademark brand of self-effacing humor coming back in full force on the track "Red Flag", but I feel like her delivery on this one is missing that wild, crazy edge that made her early work so charming. And "Love Forever" is one of a few tracks on this record that see Kesha operating in this oddly low gear, doing a bit of a smooth, chill disco pop fusion thing. And it's okay. Underwhelming, to put it lightly.

The song "Glow" somehow feels even more regimented by comparison with its polite beats and very phoned-in autotune vocals. It feels weird to say, but Kesha somehow sounded more vibrant, in your face, and willing to take risks on her last few albums, which obviously were a little dialed down in some ways because she was clearly making an effort to distance herself from that silly party girl stereotype. And while I do think she is embracing that once again, successfully on some tracks with this record, much of the time she just doesn't seem up to the task. Songs like "Too Hard", I think, are evidence of this.

Before I close out this review, I do also want to bring up the opening track and the closing track, which I think are two of the weakest cuts Kesha has released in years. The song "Cathedral" is weirdly soul-sucking, which is ironic given its subject matter. I mean, the song does bring one of the more animated vocal performances on the LP for sure. But if you've heard Kesha's past few albums, you know she's dropped way more compelling piano ballads than this. Though in a way, at least on this track, she acknowledges how far away the past and original Kesha is from the person who sings before you right now.

And then the opening track, "Freedom". While I do understand the importance of Kesha, like, putting out a song like this, being on her own label with this record, I'm still not sure where to start with this track because I think it's a complete and utter mess. The lengthy, spacey ambient piano intro that takes up the whole first leg of the song does very little to set up what is to come, which is this weird lopsided pop funk Frankenstein monster, where each section and group of instrumentation sounds like it's completely slapped together from weirdly disparate places, from the distorted slap bass lines to the horror movie piano segue to gospel chorus hits.

Plus, Kesha's vocals are so upfront in your face that she's, like, rapping politely and quietly. It's like she's doing some ASMR podcast thing. And the raunchy sexy lyrics that she has worked into this song just sound strangely unsexy. I mean, for sure, I do think there are some good tracks on this record, but this opener is a nightmare.

The rest of the tracklist to follow features a really the weakest batch of songs Kesha has put out in a long time. Or actually ever, because I do enjoy Rainbow quite a bit more than this. Kesha's first two albums are also obviously a lot better, too.

So yeah, I guess I'm sitting in front of what is my least favorite Kesha album, a record I find to be her weakest because it features some of her most unmemorable tracks, songs that honestly are far too demure for, I think, what a Kesha album should be, especially a record that really was trying to pitch itself as something that was bringing back an older, wilder version of herself. But that is just really not what happened. This thing is far too demure to be that, which is why I'm feeling a light 4 on it.

Anthony Fantano, Kesha, Forever.