Sometimes you forget how powerful music can be, and then an album comes along that makes you cry on the bus and tweet incoherent babble about how amazing it is. Kesha’s Rainbow is one of those albums.
With recurring themes of healing, moving forward, and letting haters get on with embarrassing themselves while you shake your butt on the dancefloor, this is the ultimate ‘fuck you’ album… but one that keeps the focus solely on Kesha - like she said in her Refinery29 interview, “What’s left of my heart is fucking pure gold and no one can touch that.”
Everything is about looking forward and letting go of the past, reflecting without dwelling and ultimately changing for the better.
The album is full of so much raw emotion – from indulging in simple joys to reflecting on hardships and deciding to move on – that in the space of one listen you’ll want to dance, hug your best friend, kiss a stranger, openly sob, and stride down the street with your chin in the air.
The Songs
The opening track Bastards (oh yes, this album includes lots of swears. We are very on board with this.) sets the tone for the record, with beautiful vocals and an acoustic guitar. Kesha sings that “life’s too short”, and “don’t let the bastards get you down” – which, especially with popularity of recent TV adaptation The Handmaid’s Tale, is almost the unofficial mantra of resilient women. It’s a soft, emotional opening to the album that reflects on the past and deciding to say, no, they won’t break me.
We then power into Let ‘Em Talk, which is an absolute stomper of a song. Continuing with the theme of “don’t let those losers take your magic”, this upbeat pop track is more of a party, telling you to let people say whatever they want about you, because they can’t touch you – you’re way too busy dancing with your girlfriends to even give them the time of day.
“Within the context of Rainbow as a whole, the already released singles were given a power shot of new energy.”
Straight into another ‘kicking ass and taking names’ song next – the epic call-to-arms that is Woman. When I started listening, I figured that I’d end up skipping through the songs that I’d already heard to get to the new ones, but within the context of Rainbow as a whole, the already released singles were given a power shot of new energy. This is followed by another pre-released track, a song that declares “I know that I’m perfect even though I’m fucked up”. Kesha has spoken previously about her own interpretation of interpretation and religion, and how it doesn’t really matter, because we all have our own. Hymn is exactly what it says on the tin – a “hymn for the hymnless”, an anthem for herself and her fans who feel like they don’t fit into the boxes that organised religions make for us.
Then comes Praying – the debut single, and the start of Kesha’s new wave of awesomeness. You can read what is pretty much The Nopebook’s collective opinion of Praying here, but in short, a lot of us were in tears. For me, it’s the moment that you realise the song isn’t about Kesha praying… it’s that she’s hoping the perpetrator of her suffering is praying for forgiveness. I can’t listen to that line (and of course, that whistle note) without my skin erupting in goosebumps and my eyes filling up. Having listened to the whole album, Praying was the perfect lead single, and you know what, just the perfect everything. I really, really love this song.
Learn to Let Go comes next, bringing out the theme of healing again. As previously mentioned, Kesha manages to look at the past with a new clarity and focus more on loving yourself and moving on… which is evident in the next song, Finding You, a song about eternal love that’s worthy of your next roadtrip playlist with it’s twanging guitars and rhythmic beat. This is truly a ‘turn your face to the sun’ kind of song.
With the title track Rainbow, Kesha truly expresses the heart of what this album is all about. She sings about “falling back in love with life”, something that any of us who have been hurt or abused in the past might know something about. This song is an embrace to anyone who has ever felt like it’s not worth going on, and implores you to “hold tight sweetheart”, and come and play with Kesha in her newly discovered kaleidoscope world of colour. In her Refinery29 interview (seriously, you should read it) Kesha reveals that this song came to be on a borrowed keyboard with a pair of busted headphones, in hour-long intervals whilst she was in rehab… just in case your heart wasn’t aching for her already. As many of the tracks on the album do, the song swells in the final third in a way that brings tears to your eyes makes you wish you had a lighter, to wave in triumph and solidarity.
“It’s the kind of song that makes you imagine a montage of yourself jumping on your bed or dancing on the beach.”
We take another turn back towards the unapologetically fun side of the record now, with Hunt You Down, a track that is musically reminiscent of Lily Allen’s Not Fair. It’s a sweet, jolly country tune – with an undertone of danger if you do Kesha wrong. She’s no longer fucking around. This is followed up by Boogie Feet, a song that takes absolute joy in itself right from the get go. It’s the kind of song that makes you imagine a montage of yourself jumping on your bed or dancing on the beach… or maybe that’s just me.
More country vibes now with Boots, another love song seemingly about a cowboy. Hey, we’ve all for our fantasies (and I’m sure that’s a whip snapping in the chorus…?). Nothing, however, gets more country than Old Flame (Can’t Hold a Candle to You), which features country queen Dolly Parton. If Boogie Feet makes you want to jump on the bed, Old Flame makes you want sip whiskey at a bar with a mysterious stranger, who you will inevitably pour your heart out to and then sleep with (again… just me?).
The penultimate song is Godzilla, a bizarre-but-sweet acoustic song reminiscent of Kimya Dawson, about doing regular things like going to the mall and visiting your mother, but with a giant Japanese lizard-monster. It is strange, and it is adorable. Which to be honest, is probably the way I would describe Kesha’s enviable aesthetic.
The album is, in my opinion, perfectly rounded off with Spaceship, the end of the album and addressing the end of life. Kesha sings about not being scared of what comes next, and of not wanting to be confined to the earth. Instead, she wishes to take her rightful place back amongst the stars… galaxies to galaxies, stardust to stardust.
Is this a comeback?
In December 2015, Sony Music tried to frame Kesha’s absence from the music scene as a hiatus before a comeback, comparing her to the likes of Adele and Justin Timberlake who both experienced killer comebacks after taking time off from creating music.
This cheap attempt at sugar-coating what was actually an ongoing battle between Kesha and her producer was pretty transparent, and people weren’t having it – least of all Kesha herself. She responded to their comments about a ‘comeback’ in an Instagram post, making it abundantly clear that she “never wanted to have a ‘comeback’ because [she] never wanted to go away”.
Rainbow is emotional, honest, fun, powerful, empowering; everything we could have wanted it to be and more. But I will not be calling it a comeback. I won’t give Sony the satisfaction. If there’s one thing for certain, this is the brightest of new beginnings for Kesha’s career, and her own personal journey in life.
Editor’s Note: I cried listening to the album, and then again whilst editing this review as it’s just so important. The juxtaposition of the varying genres should be jarring but it’s so carefully and cleverly calculated that it all sits beautifully. Whilst Kesha leans back into her old-style of pitch correction to the point of vocoder sounds, this feels like more of a nod to her fans than it does a poor production choice - and does nothing to detract from how blatantly powerful and flawless her vocal is.
Listen to it in order, and have tissues handy.
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Rainbow is out now!
