I Thought The 80’s Were Over

Is this a picture of Ke$ha or David Bowie?

In January, when "Tik Tok" was just starting to hit, I described Ke$ha as "a 22-year-old pop confectionary/cautionary tale." By November, when "We R Who We R" debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, I had crowned her an "outcast icon." The truth probably lies somewhere in between those two statements, but if there's a better way to sum up the pop star's rather incredible rise to fame, I am unaware of it.

Because in 2010, there really was no one else who came close to matching Ke$ha, whether in terms of sheer chart dominance ("Tik Tok," enjoyed the year's longest run at #1, spending nine weeks atop the Hot 100), or pure WTF-ery. She began the year as a belching, squelching, booze-swilling party monster and ended it as perhaps the most unlikely of role models — an unrepentant oddball who not only dared to speak her mind, but defy conventions, too. And through it all, she remained largely unclassifiable, shifting between genres (pop, hip-hop, rock) and personas (dumpster-diving diva, Topanga Canyon bohemian, DayGlo star child) with each successive hit. And because of that, Ke$ha became one of the year's most interesting characters, the kind of pop oddity that leaves critics alternately grasping at adjectives and scratching their heads.

Full Story

If this kind of music can make it, then I need to let my five year old know that she can go on tour as of right now. I never thought I would utter the same words as my father, but "Do people really listen to that"?