Ke$ha and Kelly Clarkson

’TWEEN SPIRIT

Ke$ha and Kelly Clarkson court their bases

By: MATT ASHARE |  

Published: December 5, 2012

On the title track of her new album Warrior — a rousing, dance-floor anthem that also happens to be the disc's opening cut — shock-pop specialist Ke$ha takes a typically defiant stand targeted at the alienated tween masses who helped make her 2010 debut Animal a certified blockbuster. "We are the misfits, we are the bad kids/The degenerates/We ain't perfect but that's alright," she half-sings/half-raps with snarky insolence and a touch of glee. Buoyed by surging synths, and grounded in a greasy glitch-hop groove, it's the kind of masterfully overproduced, open-ended invitation to misbehave that plays both to Ke$ha's bad-grrrl base and to the growing number of hipster club kidz who thrive on Girl Talk mash-ups — the self-proclaimed, irony-loving "misfits," "bad kids," and "degenerates."
    American Idol survivor Kelly Clarkson also does her best to tap back into the tween spirit that propelled her to superstardom a decade ago with "People Like Us," one of three new tracks on her Greatest Hits: Chapter One. Set to an insistent beat that screams for a dance remix, and bolstered by arena-ready guitars, the song gives Clarkson a chance to send a message of hope to, as she puts it, "the damned" and "the lost and forgotten." Clarkson, who was 19 when she won the first season of "American Idol" in 2002, may not be quite as convincing as Ke$ha when she delivers a line like, "It's hard to get high when you're living on the bottom." But she's got earnest on her side. And the two-time Grammy-winning vocalist does her best to channel empathy when she belts out her own appeal to the outsiders of the world:  "We are all misfits living in a world on fire/Sing it for the people like us, the people like us."
    Ke$ha and Clarkson are both savvy stars with access many of the same songwriting surgeons and a-list producers, including Swedish hitmaker Max Martin and former Saturday Night Live bandmember Lukasz Gottwald (a/k/a Dr. Luke). Indeed, Martin is one of the five writers credited on the track "Warrior," and he helped pen and produce the first two cuts on Clarkson's Chapter One, the roaring chart-topper "Since U Been Gone" (from 2004's career-making Breakaway) and its de-facto follow-up "My Life Would Suck Without You" (from the 2009 comeback album All I Ever Wanted). Gottwald, who essentially discovered Ke$ha and signed her to his publishing company when she was 18, co-produced most of her new album, and worked with Martin on three of Clarkson's biggest hits, the power ballad "Behind These Hazel Eyes" (also from Breakaway), as well as "Since U Been Gone" and "My Life Would Suck Without You."
    But Ke$ha and Clarkson aren't exactly cut from the same cloth. For starters, you won't catch Clarkson rapping on Chapter One. And she's too buttoned down to drop sexually loaded double entendres or engage in the party-hearty transgressions Ke$ha unabashedly revels in with a sly wink and coy nod. Clarkson's just not an ironist: her default position is earnest romanticism, with an emphasis on aching affairs of the heart. And, while Clarkson has proven herself perfectly capable of playing the sultry soulstress, as she does to good effect on "Miss Independent," one of only two tracks from her debut album to make the Chapter One cut, when she goes off stadium-pop script, she's more comfortable crooning country duets with Jason Aldean on his 2010 Nashville smash "Don't You Wanna Stay," and with Vince Gill on the laid-back new "Don't Rush."
     Ke$ha isn't likely to be caught hanging with the likes of Aldean or Gill anytime soon. For all of her larger-than-life, Lady Gaga-esque indulgences, she apparently wants to be down with the underground in-crowd. So, on Warrior, she pairs up with indie neo-new waver Nate Ruess, the former Format frontman who's now in a band called fun., to kick up some skewed electro-dance dust with "Die Young," a shock rocker that sports a Devo-style synth hook and a bratty Ke$ha rap. Elsewhere, Iggy Pop shows up for "Dirty Love," a silly little sex song that features this awkward boast from Mr. Pop: "Santorum did it in a v-neck sweater. . . but wild child can do it better." And, the deluxe edition of Warrior includes a cooled-down yet quirky collaboration with the Flaming Lips that almost, sorta works.
    But the most telling tune on Warrior — "Wonderland — has nothing to do with tweenage kicks or late-night binges. In fact, it's a fairly straightforward, hear-on-her-sleeveless-dress piano ballad featuring Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney that finds a wistful Ke$ha looking back on old friends and simple pleasures, and playing the role of an adult as she laments "Now I wanna do a drive by/But I can't find the road." It's got a analog in "Catch My Breath," a grown-up new track on Clarkson's Chapter One that ponders future pursuits as the singer contemplates life beyond her twenties. It's a smart move for Clarkson, who seems to have figured out how to play to her strengths as she enters her thirties, just as "Wonderland" offers the promise that beneath the party grrrl poses and slick production, there's a real person named Kesha Rose Sebert who's got the potential to be more than a tween queen.