Artist will embark on ‘Gag Order’ tour this fall
“Just what is Kesha trying to say?” is the prevailing question surrounding the pop star’s new album, Gag Order, which is something like a Rosetta Stone of tumult created in the wake of her long-running legal battle with music producer Dr. Luke. The new video for the album’s single “Only Love Can Save Us Now” only mystifies her message more.
A man wearing a skin-tight Kesha body suit runs in traffic and pouts on a sidewalk. A person mummified in red cellophane like a Magritte painting (or a cinnamon candy) sits in a surely uncomfortable folding chair. A fuzzy ottoman rises up in a red room, wearing a stoic mask. And then, of course, there’s Kesha herself singing her lyrics in an art gallery filled with bemused patrons who look disdainfully at her as she convulses on the floor and raises her hands heavenward, her creepy eye palm tattoos looking like stigmata. What does it all mean? When will love save her and us and everyone in the art gallery, especially the person who, for the love of all that is good and just and explicable, drags Kesha across the floor without pausing even to let her finish a verse? Kesha, of course, can’t tell you and wouldn’t anyway, even after you let her catch her breath.
The only hints lie in a statement that Kesha released, using the word “ludicrosity,” in May. “I have had an overwhelming dichotomy of emotions, oscillating between pain and love,” she said. “Chaos and love. Fear and love. I wanted my song ‘Only Love Can Save Us Now’ to sonically, lyrically, and emotionally reflect the severity of my mental pendulum swings. The world is so overwhelming sometimes. It requires a moment of surrender. The ludicrosity of life can make you crazy. If anything, if anything, can save us, I believe only love can. This song is a desperate and angry prayer. A call to the light when all feels lost.”
Kesha told Rolling Stone recently that the closest she’s come to addressing the Dr. Luke legal drama is on the album’s “Fine Line.” “I feel as if there has been an implied gag order for a very long time now,” she said of the album title. “With my ongoing litigation hanging over my head, I have not been able to speak freely because I know everything I say is scrutinized.” His defamation suit against her may go to trial this summer. Either way, she’s touring this fall on a trek that will likely raise more questions, existential or otherwise.