It seems Ke$ha's entire existence has been ridiculed from the moment she launched on the scene with "Tik Tok" in late 2009. Who is this girl? Why are all of her songs ridiculously autotuned? Why can't she sing about anything other than sex, partying, and alcohol? Her debut album, Animal, and its companion EP Cannibal, were more than enough to warrant this barrage of insults.
However, the concluding title track to Animal, where she half-mourns-and-half-celebrates the fleeting time on earth, suggested she was capable of more than raunchy party anthems. And when she promised that her second full-length record would feature no autotune, more mature themes, and even a new genre of music she invented - "**** pop" - Warrior instantly became the most anticipated pop release of 2012. Ke$ha's done her fair share of feeling herself up about this album for the past year, and her bold comments ultimately mean one of two things - either she will finally silence her critics and prove that she is the real deal, or she will fail in her efforts and look like a pretentious loon.
The latter seems to be the case.
First off, Ke$ha outright lied about the lack of autotune on this album. It's noticeably present in two tracks, and probably was used discretely to clean up her vocals on several others. Second of all, this "**** pop" - which is a really bad imitation of '70s rock - sucks and is only present for one or two songs of the album. And finally, there is absolutely no thematic growth from Animal and Cannibal. With the exception of the opening and closing tracks, where she touches on the idea of accepting and embracing each others' differences in a highly shallow, superficial manner, all of these songs are par for the course for Ke$ha - "I don't want to go to sleep" here, "I want to get high" there, and (insert very bad rapped couplets about sex) added for good measure. Not all of them are necessarily bad. The dancey semi-ballad "Wherever You Are", where Ke$ha laments lost love, is probably the most vulnerable she's ever sounded on record. The acoustic guitar strumming and whistling in "Crazy Kids" instantly becomes trapped in your head.
But the biggest problem is that it seems like Ke$ha put almost no effort into this, which is odd since her first LP came out almost three years ago, and she should have had plenty of time to work on this. Most of the songs run on similar structure - start with the chorus, insert an instrumental interlude (optional), launch into semi-sung-semi-rapped verses, and some of them (like first single "Die Young") don't even include bridges when there really should be one. She even repeats a lame lyric about "cutting ******** out with a dagger" in both "Warrior" and "Love Into the Light".
Animal was an extremely flawed album, but at least it embraced its flaws and didn't try to be anything more than what it was - vapid, rambunctious party music. Warrior, though it demonstrates a hint of maturity that wasn't present the last time, is more or less the same thing, and it suggests that Ke$ha's initial success was a complete fluke. Which is really a shame, since it seemed for a brief moment that she actually had some potential.
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