Kesha Rose Sebert (born March 1, 1987), stylized as Ke$ha until 2014, is an American singer, rapper, and songwriter. She has attained two number-one albums on the US Billboard 200 to date, with Animal (2010) and Rainbow (2017), and the top-ten records Warrior (2012) and High Road (2020). She has also attained ten top-ten singles and three number ones on the US Billboard Hot 100, including "Tik Tok", "We R Who We R", "Timber" with Pitbull, "Die Young", "Till The World Ends" (the Femme Fatale remix) with Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears, "Your Love Is My Drug", "Blow", "Blah Blah Blah" and "My First Kiss" with 3OH!3 (both as a lead and featured act), and "Take It Off". Furthermore, she has an uncredited number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 with her featured appearance on American rapper Flo Rida's 2009 hit single "Right Round". Her debut single "Tik Tok", which released later that same year, was at one point the best-selling digital single in history, selling over 14 million units internationally, until surpassed in 2011. She fulfilled her five-album contract with Kemosabe Records and RCA Records by releasing her final contractual album Gag Order (2023) under both labels, and released her first independent album, Period (2025), under her own label, Kesha Records.
Kesha's career was halted in between her second and third albums, Warrior and Rainbow, due to a legal dispute with her former producer, Dr. Luke, which she had filed in 2014. A series of lawsuits, known collectively as Kesha v. Dr. Luke, were exchanged between the two parties in which Kesha accused him of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and employment discrimination against her, while Dr. Luke claimed breach of contract and defamation. The case was settled out of court in June 2023.
Kesha is listed as the 26th top artist on Billboards 2010s decade-end charts. She has received various awards and nominations, including the MTV Europe Music Award for Best New Act in 2010. Kesha has also co-written songs for other artists, including "Till the World Ends" (2011) for Britney Spears and songs for Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, Miranda Cosgrove, and Girls' Generation.
Early life Kesha Rose Sebert was born on March 1, 1987, in Los Angeles. Her mother, Rosemary Patricia "Pebe" Sebert, is a singer-songwriter who co-wrote the 1978 single "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You" with Hugh Moffatt for Joe Sun, made popular by country music artist Dolly Parton on her 1980 album Dolly, Dolly, Dolly. Pebe, a single mother, struggled financially while supporting herself, Kesha, and Kesha's older brother Lagan; they relied on welfare payments and food stamps to get by. When Kesha was an infant, Pebe would often have to look after her onstage while performing. Kesha says she does not know her father's identity. In 2011, a man named Bob Chamberlain who called himself her father approached Star with pictures and letters, claiming they proved that he and Kesha had been in regular contact as father and daughter before she turned 19. Her mother is mostly of Hungarian descent. One of Kesha's great-great-grandmothers was born in modern-day Poland.
Pebe moved the family to Nashville in 1991 after securing a new publishing deal for her songwriting. She frequently brought Kesha and her brothers along to recording studios and encouraged Kesha to sing after noticing Kesha doing so. Kesha attended Franklin High School and Brentwood High School, and said she did not fit in, explaining that her unconventional style (such as homemade purple velvet pants and purple hair) did not endear her to other students. She played the trumpet and later the saxophone in the school marching band, and has said she was a diligent student.
She dropped out of school at 17 after Max Martin convinced her to return to Los Angeles to pursue a music career and earned her General Educational Development (GED) after. In a 2024 interview, Kesha contradicted past statements, saying that she never earned her GED. After attaining a near-perfect score on her SAT, she was offered a scholarship to Barnard College, an affiliate college of Columbia University, but decided to pursue her music career.
In addition to taking songwriting classes, Kesha was taught how to write songs by Pebe, and they often wrote together when she returned home from high school. Kesha began recording demos, which Pebe gave to people she knew in the music business. Kesha was also in a band with Lagan. Kesha and Pebe co-wrote the song "Stephen" when Kesha was 16. Kesha then tracked down David Gamson, a producer she admired from Scritti Politti, who agreed to produce the song. Around this time, Pebe answered an advertisement from the American reality TV series The Simple Life looking for an "eccentric" family to host Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. The episode featuring the Sebert family aired in 2005. Martin had received one of Kesha's demos from Samantha Cox, senior director of writer/publisher relations at Broadcast Music Incorporated, and was impressed. Billboard described two of the demos in a cover story, the first as "a gorgeously sung, self-penned country ballad" and the second as "a gobsmackingly awful trip-hop track" where Kesha raps ad lib for a minute after running out of lyrics. It was the latter track that attracted attention.
Career
2005–2009: Career beginnings
In 2005, at age 18, Kesha was signed to the music publishing company Prescription Songs. Kesha later sang background vocals for Paris Hilton's single, "Nothing in This World". Kesha then signed with David Sonenberg's management company, DAS Communications Inc., in 2006. DAS was tasked with obtaining a major label record deal for Kesha in a year's time in exchange for 20 percent of her music income, with her having the option of ending the relationship if they failed. She worked with several writers and producers while at the company and ended up co-writing Australian pop group the Veronicas' single "This Love" with producer Toby Gad. While furthering her career in the studio, Kesha earned her living as a waitress. While struggling to get by, she began stylizing her name as 'Ke$ha', explaining the dollar sign as an ironic gesture.
In 2008, Kesha appeared in the video for her friend Katy Perry's single "I Kissed a Girl", and sang background vocals for Britney Spears' "Lace and Leather". DAS soon attracted the attention of songwriter and A&R Kara DioGuardi, who wanted to sign Kesha to Warner Bros. Records. The deal fell through due to her existing contract with Kemosabe. Kesha parted ways with DAS and returned to Dr. Luke. Kesha would appear on rapper Flo Rida's number-one single "Right Round" in early 2009, which exposed her to some mainstream attention. According to the parties present, the collaboration happened by accident; she had simply walked into a recording session for the song and Flo Rida happened to have wanted a female voice on it. It was reported that Flo Rida liked the result so much that he recorded one more track with Kesha for his album. However, she is not credited for her feature on the United States release of "Right Round" and did not collect any money for the part. She also refused to appear in the video, explaining to men's magazine Esquire that she wanted to make a name for herself on her own terms.
2009–2011: Breakthrough, Animal, and Cannibal
After failing to negotiate with Lava Records and Atlantic Records in 2009, Kesha signed a multi-album deal with RCA Records. Having spent the previous six years working on material for her debut album, she began putting finishing touches to the album. For the album, she wrote approximately 200 songs. It was certified Platinum in the United States and had sold two million albums worldwide by September of that year. The album's lead single, "Tik Tok", broke the record in the United States for the highest sales week for a single, with 610,000 digital downloads sold in a single week, the highest ever by a female artist since digital download tracking began in 2003.
It spent nine weeks at number one in the country and became the longest-running number-one by a female artist on her debut single since Debby Boone and "You Light Up My Life" in 1977. As of 2019, "Tik Tok" has sold about 14 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling single in digital history and the best-selling digital single in history by a female solo artist. Subsequent singles from the album ("Blah Blah Blah", "Your Love Is My Drug" and "Take It Off") achieved similar commercial success, each reaching the top ten in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Kesha was also featured on two top ten singles by musician Taio Cruz and electropop duo 3OH!3.
Kesha's deliberately unpolished aesthetic and juvenile stage persona, which she described as her own personality "times ten", quickly made her a deeply polarizing figure. Some of her critics found her output to be unsophisticated, while others felt that she was manufactured and lacked credibility. In May 2010, Kesha's former managers from DAS Communications Inc. filed a lawsuit against her, seeking $14 million from her for commissions on her RCA Records deal, alleging that she had extended the deadline for them to get her a major record label contract and squeezed them out of her career.
Kesha launched her own lawsuit in October, citing the California-exclusive Talent Agencies Act and asking the California Labor Commissioner to declare her contract with DAS void because it had acted as an unlicensed talent agent while procuring work for her in California, where only licensed agents can do so. The case was settled in 2012 before the release of her second album. Kesha held a benefit concert on June 16, 2010, where all proceeds went to aid victims of the 2010 Tennessee floods in her hometown Nashville. She raised close to $70,000 from the event. She was a supporting act on the summer North American leg of Rihanna's Last Girl on Earth and was awarded Best New Act at the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards.
In November 2010, Animal was re-released with a companion extended play, Cannibal. The lead single taken from Cannibal, "We R Who We R", debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. With two number ones and four top ten hits (among them her featured spot on 3OH!3's "My First Kiss") Kesha was named Hot 100 Artist of 2010 by Billboard magazine, with "Tik Tok" ranked as the best-performing song of the year in the US. The follow-up single from Cannibal, "Blow", also charted in the top ten on the Hot 100. By June 2011, Kesha had sold almost 21 million digital single downloads in the United States alone.
In February 2011, Kesha embarked on her first headlining world tour, the Get Sleazy Tour. The tour was expanded with a summer leg due to the first leg selling out and spanned three continents. Kesha co-wrote the song "Till the World Ends" for American popstar Britney Spears and was featured on the remix of the song along with rapper Nicki Minaj. After meeting Kesha at the 2010 Grammy Awards and guesting at a number of her concerts, rock singer Alice Cooper asked her to write lyrics for and vocally perform as a devil character on their duet track, "What Baby Wants", on Cooper's album Welcome 2 My Nightmare (2011).
Kesha was named rights group Humane Society of the United States's first global ambassador for animal rights, for which she is expected to bring attention to such practices as cosmetics testing on animals and shark finning. Kesha received the Wyler Award presented by The Humane Society as a celebrity or public figure who increases awareness of animal issues via the media. She received the award March 23, 2013, at The 2013 Genesis Awards Benefit Gala. She appeared alongside rock singer Iggy Pop in a campaign for PETA, protesting the clubbing of baby seals in Canada and later wrote on behalf of the organization to McDonald's over the conditions of their slaughterhouses.
2012–2013: Warrior and other projects