You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
This episode contains explicit language.
Kesha is a singer and songwriter from Los Angeles.
She put out her first song in 2009.
It was a huge number one hit in the US and 13 other countries.
She's had 10 top 10 singles on the Billboard charts and sold millions of albums.
She got famous for songs that were about partying.
and breaking the rules and having fun.
But this year, in May 2023, she put out the album Gag Order, which is a lot more raw and vulnerable.
She made it with superstar producer Rick Rubin.
And for this episode, I talked to Kesha about her song Eat the Acid,
which she wrote early on in the pandemic.
I was really interested in the intense, distorted vocal sound that I heard in the track.
And as you'll hear,
it turns out most of that was a byproduct of the way she had to write and record when we were all in lockdown.
My name is Kesha.
Kesha told me that from 2008 to 2020, she spent her life as a pop star in kind of a bubble.
I was living life moment to moment for 12 years.