Ke$ha: Cannibal

Videos by American Songwriter

Ke$ha
Cannibal
RCA
[Rating: 3 Stars]

And continuing with the “Hey, it’s the holidays, here’s a half-baked album, now give us your money, sucker” theme for this week’s new releases, we have the latest EP from America’s glitter-barf princess, Ke$ha. Oh joy! Odds are you’ve already formed an opinion about the Nashville-raised dance-pop hit-maker -– she tends be pretty polarizing what with her whole blacked-out-Barbie-doll aesthetic -– but you can’t argue with the fact that she is the Dylan of college girls having drunken, unprotected sex with absolute strangers. Yes, all of her songs tend to be about wanton sexuality, drugs, alcohol, and reveling in the tacky end of the cultural swimming pool, but ya know, there’s something truly poetic in a line like “I just can’t date a dude with a vag” from “Grow A Pear”. Okay, maybe it’s not poetry, and it’s maybe even a little offensive on a sorta-moral level, but it’s fun, which is the whole point, right?

Ke$ha didn’t really set the bar for intellectual heft too high on her debut, Animal, so it seems like hair-splitting to mention that even with guilty pleasures like “Cannibal” and, uh, “C U Next Tuesday”, Cannibal seems to be skimping on the cleverness. (Yes, her first album did have it’s exceptionally clever moments. No, seriously. Swear to god.) Her sorta-rap flow comes up short on “Sleazy”. “The Harold Song” is another boring ballad with a dude’s name in the title not unlike Animal’s “Stephen.” “Crazy Beautiful Life” and “Grow a Pear” feel like second-string filler tracks,. Overall, Cannibal feels less like an album and more the a place holder on the few remaining music department store shelves there are left, which is…a thing you’ve got to do these days? It almost makes you wonder why people stopped buying music in the first place.

5 Comments

Leave a Reply

Leave a Reply

Wanda Jackson: A Queen Of Rock From The Age Of Innocence