This Week On Billboard: Ke$ha - We R Who We R

This Week On Billboard is where I unabashedly critique the current no. 1 hit on Billboard.com, the major yardstick for what's "hot" in music today. In order to simplify the review for those who don't want to read the whole article, each song is given a "!" rating, in which the finest grabs five of them. It's been gone for a while, now it's back after a 22-month hiatus.

A review of this week's number one single right after you and Ke$ha make the hipsters fall in love






I hate it when this happens. When a song debuts at the top of the Billboard charts, it’s almost never because it’s so objectively terrific that it’s unanimously beloved by everyone. Here’s the list of songs that went no. 1 in a blink of an eye. It happened either because (1) the artist’s reputation is so formidable that it supersedes the quality of the song released, (2) the song is an artist’s attempt for a comeback after a long hiatus, (3) the song is featured in a movie that millions of women saw thirty times, (4) it’s the eulogistic song of an important death, (5) a newly crowned American Idol sang the song on the season finale, and (6) payola made the radios overplay it in its first week.

I’m not entirely sure which of the six reasons was responsible for “We R Who We R’s” teleport to the top (I'm leaning towards reason no. 6), but nevertheless, it made Ke$ha lead the week in sales, airplay, and digital download. There she is, belonging in the list that includes Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston, which is something no one expected. Ke$ha’s rise to stardom is just a cesspool of embarrassment, a regression for humankind. She is neither good nor interesting nor aesthetically enticing. Musically, she has even less talent than Katy Perry. Looks-wise, she’s kind of reminds you of a Taylor Swift that slept in a dumpster for a month. Be that as it may, her debut song “Tik Tok” was addictive; it stays on you, for better or worse, like a tattoo you got while you’re hammered. You can say anything you want about her lack of talent, or her trashiness, or the stupidity of her lyrics, but you have to give props to Ke$ha for writing a song so catchy and fun to listen to.

“Tik Tok” was magnificent because it’s affiliated with the schoolyard female rap popularized by L’Trimm and JJ Fad and propagated a decade or so later by Gwen Stefani and Fergie. Ke$ha hid her shortcomings in vocal technique really well by limiting herself with verses that are playfully rapped and a chorus that is comprised of a singular note. But for some odd reason, she still stubbornly promotes herself as a singer, and she insists on singing more on the songs that followed “Tik Tok”. On “We R Who We R”, she does rap the “hot and dangerous” first half of the verses, but she doesn’t say anything as fetching as the lines heard in her debut, lyrics such as the opening “wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy” or the anthemic “po-po shut us down” part. The entire three-and-a-half minutes of this new single is plain and uneventful, and that mixed with her inept vocal exhibition makes this a track that sounds like the work of a feeble pop star that should be irrelevant.

Even by party music standards of getting innocuous, the production in “We R Who We R” is disappointingly empty, all bland synths, irritating auto-tune, and unnecessary electronic tricks. The beat Dr. Luke Gottwald constructed here is structurally congruent to another song he produced, Taio Cruz’ “Dynamite”. It's almost the same BPM, almost the same pitch, almost the same note configuration. It’s easy to come up with an assumption that he has this default house template put aside, called upon whenever he’s creatively blocked, or whenever he’s too lazy to come up with anything inspired. I guess, in his mind, Ke$ha’s going to fuck it up anyway, so why should he waste his precious high-priced creations on someone like her. When someone like Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, or Kelly Clarkson needs his services, that’s when he puts out the good shit. Can you imagine if he wasted “Since U Been Gone” or “Girlfriend” on Ke$ha? Although, little did he know that the North American public would push this junk straight to the top of the Billboard charts, then he probably would’ve tried a little harder.

(t5!) score: !