A few days ago I overheard my buddy Jared say something along these lines: “Kesha? Really? Is this what music is coming to? Awful.”  I assume he’s referring to her single, “Tik Tok”.

I mean, in one sense, I can completely see where he’s coming from.  There’s nothing particularly original or groundbreaking about her single; nothing musically interesting or complex.  Sure, she’s following the trend of pop music sounding ever so slightly more electronic (which I submit can only be a good thing), and her voice and music are somewhat reminiscent of Rihanna who, while mainstream now, was a bit of a new sound when she first emerged, but Ke$ha’s not inventing any new ideas here.  Led Zeppelin she ain’t.  Also bear in mind that Jared dates a classical musician and has wildly varied tastes in music, so his exposure and deep interest in music goes far beyond the mindless drivel of corporate pop.  It stands to reason that Ke$ha would fall below his musical standards, and there’s not a thing wrong with that.

But when he said that, I felt an unexpected and completely irrational twinge of defensiveness.  Because in spite of itself and in spite of myself, I love this track.  Thinking more about this, I was reminded of something my homeboy DJ CraveOne (JUNGLE RECON REPRAZENT) told me that he once heard from a party DJ, and the basic theme of it was basically, “you’re thinking about it the wrong way.”

The argument was that this type of music isn’t intended to be complex or groundbreaking or fascinating.  It’s not a piece you’re going to study in your musical theory courses.  That’s not what this is about.

This is about getting down.  This is about a track that’s fun to sing, a beat that’s fun and easy to dance to, and a song with words that are easy to remember so you can sing along when you’re staggering out the door of the club at 2AM.  This is a style of music that’s intended to get in your head and stay there.  This is the music you nod your head to when there’s no music to be heard, because it’s playing in your head.  When this song drops at the club, girls jump up to dance because they heard it on the radio in the car on the way to work one day, and when they did, they thought, “if I were at the club I would totally dance to this.”  (And everyone knows that when the girls jump up and dance, all the guys mindlessly follow.)  So by that measure, I’d have to say that in spite of being mindless pop drivel, this is a damn good song because it’s been playing in my head nonstop for about two months, and I still don’t hate it.

Here’s the Fred Falke Radio remix, which has found its way into regular rotation in my more mainstream gigs.

Kesha – Tik Tok (Fred Falke Radio remix).mp3

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.