Latest news with #Kemosabe
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Express Tribune
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Is Doja Cat's team scared her new album will flop?
Whispers are swirling around Doja Cat's stalled comeback, and not everyone's convinced it's just a matter of timing. Her long-teased album Vie was first announced in February, with buzz picking up again when a snippet of its alleged lead single Jealous Type appeared in a high-profile Marc Jacobs campaign. But months later, there's still no release date, no music video, and no confirmed rollout, leaving fans and industry watchers wondering: is Doja's team nervous about how it'll land? There's talk that Jealous Type sounds too safe, a return to her earlier, chart-friendly pop-rap sound that lacks the experimental flair of Scarlet. That shift has sparked quiet speculation that the label might be second-guessing its decision, unsure if playing it safe is the right move for an artist known for her unpredictability. Despite early hype, the track remains unreleased and the album campaign seems to be stalling. Some suggest internal chaos could be to blame. Doja is signed to both Kemosabe (headed by Dr Luke) and RCA, two labels often accused of mismanaging major artists. Insiders point to sample clearance issues or executive indecision as possible factors behind the delay. Others believe the label may be waiting for a more favourable market window, or scrambling to rework the album altogether. Adding to the unease is the absence of clear branding or visuals. For an artist who built entire eras around aesthetic reinvention, the lack of direction this time feels off. Behind the scenes, it seems even her team isn't fully sure what the Vie era is supposed to be. Still, Doja's commercial track record and intense fan loyalty may be her saving grace. With the right move, the comeback could still be massive, but time is running out.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kesha Makes Chart-Topping Debut With New Album ‘. (Period)'
Kesha's new studio album . (Period) makes its mark on Billboard's charts, as the set debuts at No. 1 on Top Album Sales, Vinyl Albums and Top Dance Albums (chart dated July 19). . (Period) is her first independently released album after a career with Kemosabe/RCA Records. The set was issued through the singer's own Kesha Records label and distributed by Warner Music Group's indie distribution arm Alternative Distribution Alliance. All charts dated July 19 will be posted in full to Billboard's website on July 15. More from Billboard Rauw Alejandro Gains Big: 'Carita Linda' Takes No. 1 Spot on Latin Airplay Chart Pusha T on Drake's 'What Did I Miss?': 'Just Not for Me' Travis Scott Gets Inked With a Tiger Tattoo in Eerie 'DUMBO' Video: Watch With . (Period)'s debut at No. 1 on Top Album Sales, it marks the singer-songwriter's first No. 1 on the ranking since 2017's Rainbow, and third leader overall. She also topped the chart with her debut effort, 2010's Animal. Overall, . (Period) marks her fifth top 10 on the ranking. . (Period) also debuts at No. 3 on Indie Store Album Sales, No. 3 on Independent Albums and No. 17 on the overall Billboard 200. On the latter, it's her seventh top 40-charted album. In its first week of release . (Period) earned 23,000 equivalent album units in the United States, in the tracking week ending July 10, according to Luminate. Of that sum, traditional album sales comprise 15,500, with vinyl purchases totaling nearly 11,000 (her best sales week ever on vinyl). The album was issued across seven vinyl variants, including two signed editions. Equivalent album units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. On the Top Album Sales chart, Kesha is one of just two debuts in the top 10. KATSEYE's BEAUTIFUL CHAOS holds at No. 2 (12,000 sold; down 59% in its second week), while the rest of the top six titles are former No. 1s. Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet jumps 19-3 (9,000; up 71% after the release of a new vinyl variant), ENHYPEN's DESIRE : UNLEASH rises 8-4 (8,000; down 19%), Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem climbs 11-5 (7,000; down 12%) and Lorde's Virgin falls 1-6 (6,500; down 84% in its second week). Vulfpeck notches its best sales week ever and first top 10 as Clarity of Cal debuts at No. 7 with 6,500 – nearly all from vinyl purchases. Pressed in just one edition, the set also starts at No. 3 on the Vinyl Albums chart. Rounding out the rest of the top 10 on the Top Album Sales chart: Barbra Streisand's The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two falls 4-8 (just over 4,000; down 77% in its second week), the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack jumps 21-9 (a little more than 4,000; down 6%) and Charli xcx's Brat bounds 45-10 (4,000; up 72% after a new CD variant was released). Billboard's Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The Vinyl Albums and Indie Store Album Sales charts rank the week's top-sellers on vinyl, and at indie and small chain record stores, respectively. The Top Dance Albums, Independent Albums and the Billboard 200 rank the week's most popular dance, independent and overall albums, by equivalent album units earned, respectively. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Four Decades of 'Madonna': A Look Back at the Queen of Pop's Debut Album on the Charts Chart Rewind: In 1990, Madonna Was in 'Vogue' Atop the Hot 100
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kesha's New Record Is a Mess, In a Good Way
It's easy to root for Kesha, which makes listening to (Period.) — her first album as an independent artist, hence its July 4 release date — such a blast. Bookended by pensive moments, (Period.) is a frisky pop record that delights in throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks — while also getting a kick out of any mess that might result from a less-than-successful toss. (Period.) picks up sort of where 2023's Gag Order — her final release on her former label, Kemosabe — left off: The music is shapeless, the wailing wordless. Eventually, the blur begins to clear. 'Freedom,' Kesha bellows, her voice opening wide on the vowels as the instrumentation narrows around her. Finally — after a pitchman-sounding voice trills, 'Narcissism! It makes you happy!' — a beat drops in, and 'Freedom' goes from amorphous to pointed, whirling through post-punk dance-floor raging and gospel-choir riffing while Kesha coolly yet saucily purrs carefree raps like 'Crazy girls are better in bed/Well, I can do one better instead.' More from Rolling Stone Kesha Supports Cassie Following Sean Combs Conviction: 'I Believe You' Kesha Gears Up for Tits Out Tour With Slayyyter, Rose Gray Collab, 'Attention!' Kesha Gets Wild and NSFW in Outrageous 'Boy Crazy' Video Kesha's taste for pop experimentation is in full flower on (Period.), her indie debut well-timed to the long-brewing mainstream break of the hedonistic, neon-hued, kitchen-sink genre known as hyperpop. 'Joyride,' the album's thumping first single, blends norteña accordion blasts, huge backing vocals, and mouth-stretching enunciation; on 'Yippie-Ki-Yay,' Kesha takes over the DJ booth at a honky-tonk, lending her mighty voice to lyrics about 'double-cupping straight gasoline' and adding foundation-rattling beats. Things mellow out a bit as (Period.) draws to a close. 'Glow' is serenely self-satisfied, Kesha's glitched-out voice darting through eight-bit synths. The album ends with 'Cathedral,' a clear-eyed look at survival that's also a reminder of Kesha's gravity-defying vocal prowess. 'Every second is a new beginning/I died in the hell so I could start living again,' she shouts amid droning strings and resolute piano, then declares: 'I'm the cathedral.' (Period.) shows that Kesha is ready to take in all who have believed in her. Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Kesha: . (Period) review – a smart, funny return to her hedonistic hot-mess persona
Kesha Sebert has described her sixth album . (referred to hereafter as Period) as 'the first album I've made where I felt truly free'. It comes accompanied by a lengthy world tour, advertised by a photo in which the singer expresses her freedom – in what you have to say is a very Kesha-like manner – by riding a jetski while topless. Long-term observers of her turbulent career may note that this doesn't seem so different from the way she framed her third album, 2017's Rainbow, which she described at the time as 'truly saving my life', and featured her on the cover naked and was accompanied by a tour called Fuck the World. But it would be remiss to deny her the ability to make a similar point again. Rainbow was released at the height of her legal battle with her former producer 'Dr' Luke Gottwald. Kesha had accused him of sexual assault and other allegations, which he denied, resulting in a series of lawsuits and countersuits. Although alternative producers were found to work on Rainbow, she was still legally obliged to release the album – and its two successors – on Gottwald's Kemosabe label. The two reached a settlement in 2023, her contract with Kemosabe expired shortly afterwards, and Period is now released on her own label. While Rainbow and its immediate follow-ups regularly mined the legal disputes and resulting trauma for lyrical inspiration – a dramatic shift from the screw-you hedonism that powered her big hits in the early 2010s – Period signals a fresh start by, more or less, bringing back the Kesha who boasted about brushing her teeth with Jack Daniel's and took to the stage accompanied by dancers dressed as giant penises. Only the piano ballad closer Cathedral seems entirely rooted in recent events – 'Life was so lethal … I died in the hell so I could start living again'. Elsewhere, the occasional hint of something dark in the author's past ('I earned the right to be like this') is drowned out by the sound of Kesha reverting to type in no uncertain terms: 'take me to the sex shop', 'bartender pour me up some damn fluid', 'I like chaos, dripping head to toe', 'gimme gimme gimme all the boys'. And who can blame her? No one wants to be defined by trauma, and she's doubtless keen to assert that the original Kesha persona was more to do with her than the svengali-like producer who discovered her. Furthermore, it's a weirdly timely return. In 2010, Kesha's hot mess persona made her an outlier, albeit an outlier whose debut single TiK ToK sold 14m digital copies worldwide. The critic Simon Reynolds smartly noted that if the era's predominant female star Lady Gaga saw her work as high-concept art-pop in a lineage that included David Bowie and Roxy Music, Kesha was more like their glam-era rival Alice Cooper. Fifteen years on, we live in a pop world at least partly defined by Charli xcx's last album. Perpetually half-cut and lusty, open about her messy failings ('I like the bizarre type, the lowlife … God, I love a hopeless bastard,' she sings of her taste in men on Red Flag), Kesha could make a fair claim to be a godmother of Brat. Certainly, you couldn't accuse her of jumping on a latter-day trend, just as Period's diversion into vogue-ish country-pop, Yippee-Ki-Yay, seems less craven than it might. Kesha has done past work in that area – from her 2013 Pitbull collaboration Timber to her duet with Dolly Parton on Rainbow. Yippee-Ki-Yay's country-facing sound sits among a buffet of current pop styles: there's synthy, 80s-leaning pop-rock you could imagine Taylor Swift singing on Delusional and Too Hard, and mid-tempo disco on Love Forever, while the spectre of hyperpop haunts the warp-speed Boy Crazy and Hudson Mohawke turns up glitchy Auto-Tune-heavy electro on Glow. It's an album clearly intended to re-establish Kesha at the heart of pop, which means there's no room for the appealing weirdness of her 2023 single Eat the Acid, and it's only on the closing Cathedral that her voice really shifts into the full-throttle roar she unleashed covering T Rex's Children of the Revolution at 2022's Taylor Hawkins tribute concert. That said, the songs are all really strong, filled with smart little twists and drops, and funny, self-referential lines: 'You're on TikTok / I'm the fucking OG.' You get the sense of the massed ranks of collaborators – including everyone from regular Father John Misty foil Jonathan Wilson to Madison Love, who counts Blackpink and Addison Rae among her songwriting clients – really getting behind her to make Period a success. Kesha, meanwhile, plays the part of Kesha 1.0 to perfection: for all the lurid lyrical excesses, it never feels as if she's trying too hard. And why would it: she's returning to a role she originated. Lathe of Heaven – Aurora Cognitive dissonance: Lathe of Heaven look weirdly like a new wave of British heavy metal band, but Aurora's sound is equal parts smeary shoegazing and epic early 80s synth-pop. Great song regardless.
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Kesha: . (Period) review – a smart, funny return to her hedonistic hot-mess persona
Kesha Sebert has described her sixth album . (referred to hereafter as Period) as 'the first album I've made where I felt truly free'. It comes accompanied by a lengthy world tour, advertised by a photo in which the singer expresses her freedom – in what you have to say is a very Kesha-like manner – by riding a jetski while topless. Long-term observers of her turbulent career may note that this doesn't seem so different from the way she framed her third album, 2017's Rainbow, which she described at the time as 'truly saving my life', and featured her on the cover naked and was accompanied by a tour called Fuck the World. But it would be remiss to deny her the ability to make a similar point again. Rainbow was released at the height of her legal battle with her former producer 'Dr' Luke Gottwald. Kesha had accused him of sexual assault and other allegations, which he denied, resulting in a series of lawsuits and countersuits. Although alternative producers were found to work on Rainbow, she was still legally obliged to release the album – and its two successors – on Gottwald's Kemosabe label. The two reached a settlement in 2023, her contract with Kemosabe expired shortly afterwards, and Period is now released on her own label. While Rainbow and its immediate follow-ups regularly mined the legal disputes and resulting trauma for lyrical inspiration – a dramatic shift from the screw-you hedonism that powered her big hits in the early 2010s – Period signals a fresh start by, more or less, bringing back the Kesha who boasted about brushing her teeth with Jack Daniel's and took to the stage accompanied by dancers dressed as giant penises. Only the piano ballad closer Cathedral seems entirely rooted in recent events – 'Life was so lethal … I died in the hell so I could start living again'. Elsewhere, the occasional hint of something dark in the author's past ('I earned the right to be like this') is drowned out by the sound of Kesha reverting to type in no uncertain terms: 'take me to the sex shop', 'bartender pour me up some damn fluid', 'I like chaos, dripping head to toe', 'gimme gimme gimme all the boys'. And who can blame her? No one wants to be defined by trauma, and she's doubtless keen to assert that the original Kesha persona was more to do with her than the svengali-like producer who discovered her. Furthermore, it's a weirdly timely return. In 2010, Kesha's hot mess persona made her an outlier, albeit an outlier whose debut single TiK ToK sold 14m digital copies worldwide. The critic Simon Reynolds smartly noted that if the era's predominant female star Lady Gaga saw her work as high-concept art-pop in a lineage that included David Bowie and Roxy Music, Kesha was more like their glam-era rival Alice Cooper. Fifteen years on, we live in a pop world at least partly defined by Charli xcx's last album. Perpetually half-cut and lusty, open about her messy failings ('I like the bizarre type, the lowlife … God, I love a hopeless bastard,' she sings of her taste in men on Red Flag), Kesha could make a fair claim to be a godmother of Brat. Certainly, you couldn't accuse her of jumping on a latter-day trend, just as Period's diversion into vogue-ish country-pop, Yippee-Ki-Yay, seems less craven than it might. Kesha has done past work in that area – from her 2013 Pitbull collaboration Timber to her duet with Dolly Parton on Rainbow. Yippee-Ki-Yay's country-facing sound sits among a buffet of current pop styles: there's synthy, 80s-leaning pop-rock you could imagine Taylor Swift singing on Delusional and Too Hard, and mid-tempo disco on Love Forever, while the spectre of hyperpop haunts the warp-speed Boy Crazy and Hudson Mohawke turns up glitchy Auto-Tune-heavy electro on Glow. It's an album clearly intended to re-establish Kesha at the heart of pop, which means there's no room for the appealing weirdness of her 2023 single Eat the Acid, and it's only on the closing Cathedral that her voice really shifts into the full-throttle roar she unleashed covering T Rex's Children of the Revolution at 2022's Taylor Hawkins tribute concert. That said, the songs are all really strong, filled with smart little twists and drops, and funny, self-referential lines: 'You're on TikTok / I'm the fucking OG.' You get the sense of the massed ranks of collaborators – including everyone from regular Father John Misty foil Jonathan Wilson to Madison Love, who counts Blackpink and Addison Rae among her songwriting clients – really getting behind her to make Period a success. Kesha, meanwhile, plays the part of Kesha 1.0 to perfection: for all the lurid lyrical excesses, it never feels as if she's trying too hard. And why would it: she's returning to a role she originated. Lathe of Heaven – Aurora Cognitive dissonance: Lathe of Heaven look weirdly like a new wave of British heavy metal band, but Aurora's sound is equal parts smeary shoegazing and epic early 80s synth-pop. Great song regardless.
