Backup Dancers From Hell: Kesha - “Blow”

We start out with a disclaimer that “No mythological creatures were harmed in the making of this video.” Really? That doesn’t bode well. I hope she didn’t try to have sex with them, something that’s always a flight-risk in a Kesha video.

Cut to Kesha and some people with unicorn-heads (not kidding) sitting in a room, drinking champagne while Kesha babbles the details of how she was elected to the Parliament in Uzbekistan (still not kidding). Zip over to Kesha somewhere else, and she kicks off the song, bellowing “Dance!” (which comes as a total surprise, because her songs are rarely ever about partying, right?).

Cut back to Champagne Kesha as a unicorn butler presents her with a tiny snacky thing on a tray. Kesha, perhaps not recognizing food when she sees it, looks questioningly at the butler, who points out a man across the room, who turns out to be James Van Der Beek doing a bit of slumming. Apparently the sight of his unshaven face instantly inspires Kesha to shove the miniscule bit of cheese in her mouth in what she assumes is a seductive manner.

Zip over to Singing Kesha, who rap-sings the song while introducing her signature move for this video, which turns out to be holding her fingers in the shape of a gun and then waving that hand about like she’s Jackie Brown. Zip back to the Room of Unicorns, Cheese and Drinking, where James jumps to his feet, causing Kesha to jump to her feet, because ain’t nobody gonna steal the spotlight in her own video. They glare at each other with a mixture of lust, unfinished business, and high-end couture.

Singing Kesha again, who seems about to justify my fear of her having sex with the animals, as she paws one of the Children of the Unicorn in a suggestive manner, then she licks his snout. Oh my. This foreplay is interrupted so we can check on Champagne Kesha and James as they march toward one another, intentions unclear, as a new herd of unicorns arrive to just stand there and distract us.

Quick shot of a unicorn drinking a glass of champagne. I guess he’s heard the rumor that the Kesha in the other room wants to play naughty reindeer games, so he’s building up his courage. Meanwhile, Singing Kesha continues to wave around her fake hand gun and do an intimate inventory of all her body parts, paying special attention to her port authority.

Back to Champagne and James, where he reaches in his jacket and pulls out… a comb, and tends to his hair with the assistance of some fancy video editing. Champagne responds by caressing a nearby unicorn, and then frenching it. (What is up with Kesha and the need for some Dr. Doolittle Bang-Bang?) They even loop this little snippet a few times so we can confirm that, yep, we’ve got tongue action.

A revisit with Singing Kesha (yes, she still believes that her hand is an actual weapon, poor thing), then back to James, who is inexplicably ripping the sleeves off his jacket while glaring at Kesha, then he rips the rest of it in two and throws the mess on the ground. (He couldn’t just… take the jacket off?) Then he challenges Kesha by doing one of his trademark eyebrow-raises. Insert another cameo with Singing Kesha, who yells the line “it’s time to let the crazy out!”. Honey, that done happened when I pushed play on this video.

Back in the Room of Confrontation and Torn Clothing, Champagne Kesha and James have a short dance-off, with her wiggling her non-existent hips and him managing to thrust his crotch and shove his pecs forward at the same time. Then Kesha reaches into the top of her dress and pulls out… her bra, which she tosses to the side while she smirks and her alter-ego in the Uni-Sex Room continues to be inspired by all the horns everywhere.

James, not to be outdone, reaches into his own shirt and whips out a matching bra, although it takes him longer to toss it aside, so he must like his support garments more than Kesha does. Kesha briefly looks confused (we’ll assume that she didn’t have to take acting lessons for that), then decides the business with his bra was really hot so they rush to the middle of the room for further discussion and the possible appearance of additional lingerie.

They proceed to have a mystifying conversation where they taunt each other, make fun of each other’s names, and analyze muenster cheese. This is probably supposed to be erotic and sexy banter, but I’m distracted by the Horn People in the background who don’t really know what they’re doing in this scene and keep shifting about. Kesha ends the wordplay with “Shall we dance?”

But instead of clenching one another and moving to the rhythm, they go to opposite sides of the room, then suddenly turn and start shooting laser bullets at one another. Well, then, didn’t see that coming. So now it’s all about leaping around to avoid death and making snarling faces as they return fire. (Kesha uses one of the unicorns as a body shield, so I’m sure she got a call from PETA during post-production.)

Wait, it seems that quite a few of the unicorns are getting hit by the bad beams and crashing to the ground, so Kesha probably got more than just a phone call. There are also a few other humans that I hadn’t noticed before until they get shot and go flying through the air. And the most shocking thing of all is the destruction of a completely innocent glass of champagne before anybody got to drink it.

The frantic gunplay comes to an end when Kesha finally manages to hit James in the shoulder with one of the magic bullets, knocking his gun out of his hand and allowing her to waltz up and step on his arm so he can’t reach the gun. He asks for a truce, but she decides that she’s really not in the mood for that and kills him anyway. Cut to James’ head mounted on the wall (“James Van Der Dead”), while Kesha and her Pole-Head buddies are sitting around, drinking more bubbly, and laughing hysterically.

Note to Self: Never party with Kesha. Ever. Unless I have spare bras that I don’t care for anymore, can overlook the bestiality, and don’t mind getting shot.


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Backup Dancers From Hell: Kesha - “We R Who We R”

We start off with an intergalactic digital message from outer space. It’s probably a distress signal, warning us that Kesha has made another video. Or maybe they’re just letting us know that there’s a sale at Macy’s in the Alpha Romeo galaxy. Aliens can be so confusing sometimes.

Anyway, we’re in some traffic tunnel, where we have flashing police lights and somebody’s dripping-wet hands placed on a side wall like they really don’t understand how to do push-ups. Oh, and there’s about 5 billion of Kesha’s party friends marching toward us in skanky outfits, which has become Kesha’s patented video dance move. Something has exploded behind them, but no one seems to care.

Close-up of Kesha, and somebody has glued Mini-Cooper car bumpers to her eyebrows. Kesha doesn’t seem to mind this, but she’d much prefer that we pay attention to her fingernails, waving her hands about like a Geisha girl on crack. Looks like someone spent a long time creating little metal cityscapes on each nail, and while this is interesting in a way, I’m not sure this is something I would recommend. It seems like they’d be heavy, throwing you off balance all the time when you try to walk to the bar for another round. And how in the world does this woman get through airport security?

Anyway, doesn’t matter, now we have Kesha tromping around in the tunnel, doing a tribute to old-school Madonna when Madge went through that Ponytail Blond Ambition phase. Sadly, this look isn’t quite successful for Kesha. Maybe it’s because she mysteriously chose to wear a strap of machine gun bullets with her outfit. Or maybe it’s just that Kesha is too short, with the big-ass ponytail making her look like something the Evil Stepmother would pick up and ring when she needed Cinderella to wash her feet.

Okay, time for more close-ups of Kesha, only now she’s wearing sparkly-blue eyeliner and a severe hairstyle that is reminiscent of that tarty youngster that sang with “Bow Wow Wow” back in the day. (Maybe Kesha is doing a tribute to all of her musical idols? Probably not.) Back to Ponytail Kesha, who feels inspired to grasp her breast whenever possible, as well as make hand motions that could be interpreted as a death threat if she wandered into the wrong part of Los Angeles.

More explosions in the tunnel, to keep things lively, followed by Kesha modeling more fingernail jewelry for QVC. Then Car Bumper Kesha seems to be having a migraine, or maybe her eyebrows are actually magnets that keep pulling her metal-tipped fingers toward her head. It’s a lot of work being hip and fashionable.

Two cars race through the tunnel and then disappear, signaling all the Kesha Kids to pile into the now-vacant street and begin to gyrate without breaking the shellac on their hairdos. Throughout this mess, we keep getting glimpses of a police car at the far end of the tunnel. Why he’s letting these people pogo about on a public thoroughfare, I don’t really know. Maybe he’s scared of them. Or maybe he’s been instructed to keep the Kesha Kids in the tunnel as long as possible so maybe their parents will stop drinking.

Now we might be at a dance club, but it’s hard to tell these days when you’re not sure if people are actually dancing of if there’s been a mass reaction to the shellfish. There are two ladies who might be DJ’s, but they might also be lifeguards, considering their attire. Oh, and we have lots of bottles of tequila, with some bodiless hands pouring the contents into shot glasses so we can understand how that process works. This leads to a montage of somebody’s booty shaking near the tequila bottles, and Kesha convinced that rubbing her hand on the side of her face is alluring.

At one point, Kesha waves about a crucifix on a chain, another shout-out to Madonna. Unless Kesha thinks that she just invented this look, not having been born when Madonna first rolled around in a wedding dress on the MTV stage, letting us all know that she was going to be a star whether we wanted her to or not. Luckily, we did, so that worked out okay.

We also get shots of somebody using a laptop and scrolling through the available faces for an online dating service. I’m thinking Kesha really doesn’t have a need for that sort of thing, but who knows. Maybe it’s hard to get a date when 50 million people have already seen your naughty bits in music videos.

More happy, bouncing people. Lots of them. During this bit, Kesha is wearing a modified, and mostly torn, American flag for her outfit. And her hair has been forced to look like amber waves of grain billowing in the wind. Kesha loves her country. Especially the profit part.

The music suddenly stops and Kesha appears to be standing on the roof of a building. (It’s hard to tell, because we can see her sparkly panties under the torn flag shirt, and we can’t really focus.) Kesha raises her hands (in an “Oh Mighty Isis!“ stance) and commands a DJ to turn it up. Well, this unseen DJ misunderstands and instead starts chopping up Kesha’s vocals so that she says “up” 46-thousand times until you’re ready to claw your face. Even Kesha can’t stand the sound of her voice for that long, so she hurls herself over the side of the building.

She then plummets for a quite a while before landing, unscathed, in the arms of the dancing Kesha Kids. The Kids then crowd-surf Kesha’s adored body around the tunnel while another intergalactic message is received from outer space. (It’s probably High Command, inquiring if one of their spacecraft crashed, but no, it’s just Kesha, trying to get more attention.)

And that’s about it. We have another montage of all the Kesha’s either singing, dancing, wiggling their arms, or waving jewelry about and screaming that there are only 20 items left so we better get on the phone, pronto. And we have some more explosions, but that is SO two minutes ago and we need to move on.

The video ends with a final intergalactic message. This one probably translates into “Hey kids, run out and buy the new Kesha album right now or you will be social outcasts in school come Monday morning!” Or something like that. I’m still distracted by the sparkly panties….

　

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Backup Dancers From Hell: Kesha - “Take It Off”

Hey, boys and girls, it’s Kesha and her gang of super-trampy friends once again running around and doing pointless things to the same beat that’s in every one of Kesha’s songs! Yay!

This time, Kesha and Company have invaded an abandoned motel somewhere in the desert, probably California, because one would assume that Kesha has never crossed the state line or she would know better than to dress like that. We see lots of shots of the derelict building, just so we can fully understand that it’s, you know, abandoned. This is apparently a key factor, because it’s just not as fun invading a motel where people can actually live.

It seems Kesha has just arrived on her motorcycle (or maybe she slept on it) because we see her hopping off the thing while several of her zombie girlfriends are marching up behind her. Kesha starts singing (using the term loosely), and then raises her arms, which causes several skanky guys to run up and join the caravan of trashy people going nowhere. Kesha also does something with her hands and eyes which I suppose is meant to signify that she’s a wild huntress on the prowl, but it really just looks like she’s had too much caffeine and can’t stand still.

The gang finds an abandoned car in the parking lot, and several of the guys decide this would be the perfect thing to climb on and then jump up and down. Because rusted metal is so soft and comfy. They guys get bored really quickly because, let’s face it, a broken-down car can only take you so far. (See, in one throw-away line I made a rhyme that’s more pithy than anything in this song, so it’s really not that hard, Kesha.)

Anyway, the chorus kicks in, which causes everybody to take off running like the STD test results just came in at the free clinic. Everybody starts scrambling and dancing all over the place, running up and down stairs and such. (One poor girl slams into a giant pillar that she somehow didn’t see, and then she looks over her should like somebody pushed her. They didn’t. She’s drunk.) For variety, we also have folks pounding on guest room doors and leaping through the air like people are passed out on the ground.

Kesha eventually finds a fur coat in the rusty car, because boys are stupid and they don’t recognize couture. You really need to keep warm in the desert, so Kesha slips this thing on and parades around like she’s somebody important. Then everybody decides that they want to go swimming, so they scramble over the barriers that say “Stay Out” because they can’t read. (Who goes to school anymore? That’s so 90’s.)

One brief shot of Kesha way out in the desert with nothing around here. The loneliness causes her to crawl on the ground and act like a jungle cat. This scene doesn’t fit, so it probably belongs in another video and somebody screwed up.

Back at the motel pool, we have the idiots bouncing around in the empty pool. They probably haven’t figured out that there’s not any water, but a few of them have discovered that if you touch this one guy’s back, puffs of yellow dust billow out. (How long has it been since he’s bathed? Seriously.)

Shot of someone throwing a trashcan across the parking lot, because that’s what Kesha is singing in the song right at that time. So we’re going for realism? Is this a documentary? Then a skanky boy and a slutty girl find out that if they run really fast and slam into each other, they turn into a cloud of colorful dust. Of course, it might be hard for them to cash the paycheck from this gig, since they don’t exist anymore, but I suppose it’s not important.

As anyone would do in the same situation, everybody starts picking up the pretty dust from their former friends and slinging it about as they dance and twirl. There’s a slo-mo shot of Kesha standing on the edge of the pool and opening her fur coat so we can see her jewelry better. Other than that, there’s no reason for this stunt.

Oh look, some nice gentleman tried to help one of the girls out of the pool, but his hand turned to blue dust and she fell on her ass. How inconvenient. Then Kesha, because she’s never done drugs in her life, pulls a zipper on her chest so yellow dust can spill out of her. She’s trying to smile seductively. Or maybe, with all the dust in the air, she’s signaling that somebody better bring her asthma inhaler pronto.

Despite all the odd dismemberments and death occurring around them, most of the people keep dancing and playing with the bits of their friends. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone that they are basically dancing around in a psychedelic crematorium. Nothing says “BFF” like wearing a coating of Betty Lou in your hair.

And that’s about it. More maniacal writhing on the bottom of the pool, more body parts disintegrating like a really cheap piñata, and clouds of billowing ex-people wafting about and making everything colorful but gritty. They are going to have a heck of a time getting that pool filter clean.

Finally, Kesha pulls her chest zipper all the way down and her arm disappears.

I think that says it all.

　

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Backup Dancers From Hell: Kesha - “Your Love Is My Drug”

  Wow, they sure didn’t spend any money on this thing.

  Anyway, we start out with some close-up shots of Kesha’s various body parts because she’s all about “her art” and isn’t a tramp at all. She’s waking up way out in the desert some place, because this is where you have to live when people get a little tired of hearing you on the radio. She’s apparently using some guy’s stomach as a pillow. Or maybe she just fell.

  Kesha takes a closer look at the guy, and is startled to discover he’s wearing a nasty headband, which is a sure sign of trouble. She leaps to her feet and runs away across the sand. I’m guessing she doesn’t remember his name and she’s trying to avoid any social awkwardness.

  Next thing you know, Kesha is riding an elephant and wearing a bonnet that she stole from the Statue of Liberty. That’s really stupid, so we cut to a tight shot on Kesha’s boots as she staggers through the desert. The heat makes her burst into song and wave her arms like she just spotted a taxi.

  Oh wait, there she is on the elephant again, followed by her sporting a tiger mask and assuming a squat-like position. (She likes zoos? She likes to hunt game?) Then we have several shots of her Native American jewelry as she twirls around and can’t keep still, singing about her inability to stop banging her head against the wall. Perhaps she should speak to a physician about that.

  Now she seems to have made up with the Pillow Jesus Man, because he’s back in the picture and they hold hands while a fan blows somewhere off to the side. More animal references, wild arm movements, and clunky jewelry that has GOT to be on her nerves by now. She weighs about 40 pounds. How is she managing to stay on her feet with all the wind and accessories?

  Then they start screwing around with a kaleidoscope or something, because we suddenly have six refracted images of Kesha as she prances around in the sand. This unnerves me somewhat, because I don’t think the world needs six of her. But she keeps dancing anyway, delighting in the concept of an army of her body parts conquering the planet.

  Elephant again.

  Oh, now she and Jesus are in a boat. She’s being really rude and jumping around while he tries to row them back to the Garden of Eden or maybe a place where bushes burn. Then again, I guess it doesn’t really matter how obnoxious she’s being, because there’s not any water and they aren’t actually moving. Kesha makes a reference to a “lovesick crackhead” and I officially quit trying to determine the plot.

  Good move on my part, because they’re still in the boat, but now some untalented artist is messing around with the film, using crayons to create water and buoys and giant crabs. Kesha reacts to the added décor by… I don’t what she’s doing. Pointing is involved, and wiggling around in Daisy Dukes. Then a giant cartoon wave covers up the boat, and I’m hoping the video is over so I can go harvest sugar cane in Farmville.

  Nope. Now we’re in underwater cartoon world, where the fish have human faces and they are singing. (Well, THAT just ruined Sea World for me.) The oddities continue, with a nearly naked man covering his harmonica with an absurdly-long beard, carnivorous fish that turn into mermaids, and a general theme that life in the ocean can kill you.

  Back to the desert, where Kesha is struggling to escape some evil cargo netting that she apparently got tangled in during the chorus. She flails a bit, but she’s really not trying that hard and I don’t feel especially sorry for her. Besides, doesn’t she have an assistant that can just cut that damn thing off of her? Where is he? I guess even rock stars have trouble with the help.

  Then we start jumping around, with more shots of Kesha lamely trying to fight off the Net of Death (twirling and trying to fly seem to be her signature defense moves), Kesha and Jesus standing on some big rocks and waiting for additional Commandments that might possibly be delivered, and the realization that Kesha really likes the feel of sand on her body, as well as turquoise streaks on her cheek.

  As Kesha sings about having a slumber party in her basement (just say no, kids), we are treated to images of Kesha in an outfit splattered with day-glo paint, cavorting with more boulders and a snake (music executives?), looking like there was an incident at the Play-Doh factory. I’m thinking more than just “love” is her drug.

  We’re back to cartoon world, with animals mutating and a giant billboard to remind us what the name of this song is. This is possibly a tribute to Sergeant Pepper and/or the Beatles, but really, how is Kesha going to know about that? This is clearly the work or an art director with OCD, a fondness for hemp, and a membership in AARP.

  Now it’s night time in the desert, and Kesha has settled down a little bit. She and Jesus are making S’mores at a campfire, and perhaps writing a few things down in case Moses has some extra tablets. Kesha is still really happy about her jewelry and her ability to wave her arms like she’s signaling rescue workers in helicopters.

  The song and the video wind down with Kesha doing that weird baby talk business at the end, only now Jesus is watching her and probably wondering why this disciple has proven to be so challenging and flirty. Kesha doesn’t care. Does Jesus have any gold records? I don’t think so. So she laughs a lot and plays with her hair, because she’s still young and doesn’t understand things like consequences, mortality, and an agent that really knows what he’s doing.

  Final shot is of Kesha on that damn elephant, sporting the Statue of Liberty headdress. Give me your tired, your poor, and your teenagers with disposable income….


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