In his most recent “Sneak Peaks: New Releases” post, RockNYC’s Iman said of Ke$ha’s newest album “This is a terrific mix of electro pop and rock and roll and should be a wildfire hit”. God damn was he right. Not only will Ke$ha have pleased her fans with this new album, but she’ll have gained new fans and will probably have also seen much better reviews of her music than in the past. With the general poppy overtone of Warrior that one would expect of a Ke$ha album comes a variety of rock sounds that turn a pop album into a Ke$ha-pop album.
The first two singles off Warrior were “Die Young” and “C’mon”, released on September 25th and November 16thof 2012 respectively and, while both were big hits, they were essentially the same Ke$ha the world has always heard. While “C’mon” was fantastic enough for me to have listened to it first thing in the morning, every morning, for the past week, I will now be blasting “Dirty Love (ft. Iggy Pop)”, “Gold Trans Am”,or “Love Into The Light” because: damn.
“Dirty Love” with Iggy Pop is an especially great example of Ke$ha turning pop into her own insane, warped sound by adding things like garage band inspired guitar and synth to the poppy mix. Collaborating with Iggy Pop obviously gives “Dirty Love” a strong identity as an individual song rather than as a song that’s part of an album, but interestingly enough, almost the entirety of Warrior keeps the grunge-pop spirit of Ke$ha’s music alive. “Dirty Love” is essentially about the disregarding of fancy stuff like champagne for more of a raw, primal experience of “dirty love”and that’s really what almost all of Ke$ha’s songs are like.
That being said, Ke$ha has also perfected making music that is 100% guaranteed to be absolutely sensational in night clubs. Listening to songs like “All That Matters (The Beautiful Life)”, “Supernatural”, and ESPECIALLY “Out Alive” just transports me straight to a raved out night club with lights and bass flooding the room like the ecstasy flooding the bloodstreams of everyone in the joint. Despite what a lot of pretentious assholes like to say, there are such things as good pop music and bad pop music. The super electrified club songs on Warrior are so far from bad pop music that it’ll be hard for Ke$ha to spot a bad review on a clear night with a telescope. Each song makes your heart beat with the bass and I can just already see how crazy people are going to be at her concerts.
Ke$ha’s whole message seems to be: go fucking crazy in the most ridiculous, primal way you possibly could or don’t go at all. I, for one, fucking love her message. The best part about Warrior, however, is that the album isn't 14 tracks of those kinds of songs. Each outlandish party song is interspersed amongst songs like “Wonderland”, “Love Into The Light” and “Last Goodbye” that speak a much more personal message and therefore come with a much softer sound. “Wonderland” has a beautiful intro of piano and the slow picking of the strings on an electric guitar that set up this beautifully sad song about finding one’s way back to a more wonderful (get it?) time. These songs, along with the dirty, grungy songs, the poppy songs, and the songs that are combinations of all three, form a truly fantastic album that is definitely going to sell well. Both Warrior and the deluxe version are up on iTunes so I highly recommend everyone at least preview the songs