Kesha ft. Big Freedia – Raising Hell
Kesha with Big Freedia Energy
[Video]
[6.38]
Leah Isobel: Kesha has been saddled with one of the heaviest narratives of 2010s pop music, which combines uneasily with her career–long interest in more grounded country and rock signifiers. Now when she works with those impulses, as she did on Rainbow, the effect is one of refutation; Animal becomes an outlier that she made against her will, one that doesn’t represent the Real Kesha. To work her way back to the party music that made her reputation, she has to adapt it to the new narrative frame that surrounds everything she does. If she’s having fun, she’s having fun in spite of what she experienced; partying is no longer an end into itself, but an escape from something else. Hence, “Raising Hell” deploys one of the hackiest pop tropes – gospel choirs used as a shortcut for sincere emotion – married to a pretty decent Big Freedia drop. It’s not awful, but I miss the actual, honest-to-god trashiness that she made her stock in trade. In 2019, I guess I’m the only one.
[6]
Thomas Inskeep: Finally, an uptempo Kesha record that a) isn’t touched by the evil Dr. Luke, and b) doesn’t sound like the result of a three-day vodka-and-Red Bull bender, and c) is actually fun. I’m not a fan of the EDM horns in the chorus, but apart from those, this works. I’m a bigger fan of Big Freedia in theory than practice, and accordingly prefer her in small doses; she’s quite effective here as a kind of DJ Khaled-esque hype-person. And Kesha sounds free and happy, which makes me happy.
[7]
Kayla Beardslee: I’m glad Kesha got her balls back and all, but I’m not enthused that that means a return to honking 2012 pop-drops. I will admit, though — the combined Kesha/Freedia “drop it down low” hook grows on me with every listen. The rest of the song is fine: it invites singing along and is fun in a hedonistic Ke$ha way, but it’s also very, very noisy (lots of erratic shouts and claps in the background that, to me, lean more messy than energetic). My favorite part is the final chorus (“Can I get an amen”), which is a pleasantly melodic contrast to the rest of the track, a close second being the thrilling “aaugh!” Kesha does right before the second chorus.
[6]
Alex Clifton: High Road appears to take the party-all-day spirit from Kesha’s earlier work but mixed with the rawer, more down-to-earth material from Rainbow. In theory this is a dream come true, and there’s so much about “Raising Hell” that makes it a joy to experience. The post-chorus is godawful, though. Tonally it doesn’t fit and stalls the song from its natural flow. I’m also longing for the day that Big Freedia gets the feature she deserves: her appearance is mostly limited to drop-it-drop-it-drop-it-drop-it which is delivered well but also literally one-note. Kesha’s trying to have it all ways she can–country and gospel and dance and bounce–which, as someone who likes a good genreproof song, I really respect. Unfortunately the whole package doesn’t come together as fully as it could.
[6]
Stephen Eisermann: “The best possible Andy Grammer single” is not what Kesha and Big Freedia should be collaborating on. This is a waste of time and talent and no amount of conviction from either participant can convince me otherwise.
[4]
Alfred Soto: This sounds sacrilegious: instead of defiling a religion, it defiles my idea of Kesha. After proving herself up to thumbing her nose at any genre she experimented with, she acquiesces to gospel cliches. She’s earned the right to want salvation in them, lord knows, but she needn’t sound as if Julia Michaels was her pastor.
[4]
Josh Buck: How do you have a hook like “I don’t wanna go to heaven without raising hell” and video centered around prosperity gospel preachers and NOT make it a country song?? At this point, Kesha has proven that she can tackle a variety of genres, but this bounce effort just feels scattered instead of celebratory. I realize this a loaded statement and not at all meant to be a defense or endorsement of the man, but judging by Kim Petras’ endless recent string of bangers, Dr. Luke may have been an irreplaceable ingredient in Kesha’s more crowd pleasing, debauched pop efforts. In recent years, she’s sound much stronger on her Struts and Eagles of Death Metal rock cuts, and i’d love to see her spend more time in that arena. This one reminds me a bit of the final album by The Donnas in terms of we-might-be-too-old-for-this vibes.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: The narrative, inevitable and damning, around Kesha was that in severing her ties to Dr. Luke, she lost her source of a signature sound. Rainbow, with its grabs at musical styles and Kesha’s required-for-optics but personality-dampening show of penitence, didn’t do much to dislodge it. Which is why “Raising Hell” is such a triumph: it’s evidence that she was the source of her signature sound. The song feels massive; if sound alone determines a hit, this would be No. 1 everywhere. The hook is recognizably hers: a melody that’s kin to “We R Who We R” and also to hymns. The drops r what they r; the interpolations are canny and nostalgia: an interlude of “My Neck, My Back” filtered through “Hollaback Girl,” an interlude of preaching filtered through Prince. Freedia is incapable of sounding like she’s phoning it in even when she is (I’m sure she’ll do a lot of that in the next few years), and unlike Iggy Pop or the Eagles of Death Metal, she’s an actually exciting guest pick, rather than one mostly exciting on paper to boomers. And throughout, Kesha recaptures the anarchic glee that made her career.
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: Maybe it was my naïveté in 2010 that made her sound so recklessly out of step with the rest of pop; but her post-Luke music, however much better it has been for her soul, still sounds faintly like capitulation. The secular-gospel structure and chantalong melody followed by jump around breakdowns sound like every pseudo-celebration on the market: the saving grace is Freedia’s booming authoritativeness (surely the angel Gabriel, when he tells the roll up yonder to drop it down low, sounds like her) and Kesha’s impish use of language, dancing on the borders between sacrilege and piety, hooks it up to the great stream of American song, where there is no Sunday morning without a Saturday night.
[8]
Kylo Nocom: Of all things, this reminds me of Vacation Bible School theme songs and the “Cheerleader” remix. I have scored this accordingly.
[7]
Michael Hong: The bombast of early 2010s Ke$ha meets the soulful Kesha of Rainbow racing down that same road to self-empowerment. Ke$ha’s talk-singing, a choir that makes a line like “bitch, I’m blessed” all the more enjoyable, drops mixed with the gospel influences, and Big Freedia’s bounce make for a hell of a maximalist fantasy.
[7]
Jackie Powell: When “Raising Hell” begins, it fools the listener. When the piano chords and Kesha’s introductory vocalization grace my ears during the song’s first five seconds, I’m convinced that a power ballad or at best a mid-tempo track is in store. But Kesha quickly changes direction. An explosion of camp from collaborator Big Freedia, a blaring saxophone in the chorus, the return of talk-singing in the verses and an epic build in the pre-chorus: it sounds very familiar. That’s what Kesha wants. She wants us to feel like we are once again at a 21-century hoedown. (But without Pitbull this time.) On this track, Kesha proves that both she and her fans can be “animals” while simultaneously being people with “fantastic souls”, which might have been something missing from the pre-Rainbow eras. Here, however, Kesha desires fun and a rebellion that are a rejection of evil behavior and suffocating authority figures. She’s not just sticking it to the man without a purpose. That’s the difference between Kesha of 2019 and Ke$ha of 2009. “Kesha got her balls back and they’re bigger than ever,” she said in the album trailer for High Road. But I don’t agree with that. She’s had them since her inception. Her evolution has been honest, which is something that not all artists can say.
[7]
Isabel Cole: MY! GIRL! Having proven herself an actual musician to every idiot man in the country, Kesha (perhaps sick of being so serious) gleefully returns to her favorite stomping ground of, well, glee. Raising Hell makes text what has always been the implicit mission of the Kesha project: a commitment to the fundamental sacredness of joy. It’s hard to imagine a more succinct encapsulation of her ethos than “I’m all fucked up in my Sunday best / no walk of shame cuz I love this dress”: it’s not that she takes no pleasure in the transgression of elevating ass-shaking to the level of the divine, but it’s a gentle mischief born of the deep belief in the holiness of enjoying our corporeal gifts while we still can. Feeling good is a form of worship, and a killer beat is no less legitimate an access point than a hymn. When she combines markers of religiosity with artifacts of base delights (my favorite is “Solo cup full of holy spirits,” although I also adore the the vulgarity of “bounce it up and down where the good Lord split it”), the point is not to revel in contradiction but to toast to the fact that there is no contradiction; and when she opens her scope in the coda, dedicating her preaching or perhaps this round of shots to the misfits of creation, there’s a (frankly Piscean) generosity to it. Also, (1) it slaps (2) biiiiiiiiiiiiiitch I’m blessed (3) her voice sounds just wonderful, as dextrous with an implicit smirk as ever and with a thrilling power on the places she gets to soar; I love the bit of grit we get in the chorus, like she’s singing this after a night out (4) it FUCKING slaps (5) “I’m still here still, still bringing it to ya”: ten years since TiK ToK this month, and the party still don’t start till she walks in.
[10]
3 songs in a row with [6.00]? a song about hell with 13 blurbs? very scary stuff
additionally im super glad jackie touched upon the intro switch-out which i wouldve mentioned if i had taken the time to write a serviceable blorb
awesome writing here all around