Just slightly over two years since the release of the tangible catharsis from Dr. Luke that was 2017’s Rainbow, Kesha returns in definitive form. Declaring in a teaser for her fourth album, High Road, that she’s now in a position to celebrate and enjoy life as she once did before addressing the “very serious things” that had been plaguing her since her start in the industry, she does just that in her own ribald (evangelical) fashion. With those topics now well-explored, Kesha asserts, in a way that only she could, “I’ve, like, seen the light. Life is like driving across the country in a pretty small Astro van with your whole family in it for like ninety years. Because I think life is a vacation… from where we go when we die.”
If that’s the case, well then, no wonder she’s so adamant about having a good time, about raising a little hell as she conjures the inherent good Christian bitch within that all Southern-born women are aware of in terms of an unavoidable trope. With the help of Big Freedia, the Luke Gilford-directed video (proving she can still work with people named “Luke”) evinces precisely that archetype as Kesha portrays a big-haired televangelist. More to the point, she’s “all fucked up in [her] Sunday best,” a bright pink skirt suit and blood red acrylic nails. That blood redness foreshadowing a jealous of her success husband watching her from the wings as she sheds love and light on the world.
His ire for her is so strong indeed that when she tries to express affection toward him in the house she likely paid for as she traipses around on her day off in a silk robe, he starts to choke her with malice. Not that his abusiveness wasn’t already exhibited in her dressing room, as his signature glass in hand indicates that he’s of the scary belligerent variety of alcoholic. Her attempt at countering his hate with her expression of love only serves to prove that the truly hard of heart cannot be softened. So it is that she ends up accidentally killing him in their scuffle, in a scene that’s rife for something out of an 80s Dolly Parton movie (and yes, Kesha serves up Dolly-inspired vibes for days in this video–after all, she worked on the record with her country songwriting mother, Pebe Sebert, who also famously wrote the Parton track, “Old Flames Can’t Hold A Candle to You,” which Kesha remade on Rainbow).
In the surreal scene that follows, Kesha sits in bewildered shock on her white piano seat as she contemplates what to do. In the end, like all panicked (and vaguely famous) people who have just committed a crime, she tries to conceal it, packing his body into the trunk before dyeing her hair brown and checking into a motel where her own televangelical broadcast is playing on TV. Obviously, she’s drinking from baby vodka bottles to numb the gravity of what has happened. With no other choice but to go on the run (in the style of Miley Cyrus in the “Nothing Breaks Like A Heart” video), Kesha’s “pure and utter debaucherous joy” is kiboshed by the police, who she surrenders to in frightened resignation. But still, her televangelical broadcast lives on as the announcer over the TV urges, “Call 1-855-KESHASAVS.” Because even those who are “good” are forced to deviate toward the pleasures of sin every once in a while. Particularly when that sin comes in self-defense.
It is with this video that Kesha proves her statement that she’s “got her balls back and they’re bigger than ever… So have a good time while you’re on this road trip from hell.” What else is there to do in this strange purgatory?
