Kesha’s “TiK ToK” probably isn’t going to win a Pulitzer Prize anytime soon — but that’s part of its charm.
In a new interview on The Jennifer Hudson Show, the Grammy-nominated pop star opened up about making her 2009 debut single “TiK ToK” and initially thinking the song was “too dumb” to release.
Hudson, 43, brought up the song and asked Kesha, 38, if she knew it’d become a hit. “No, oh my God,” exclaimed the “Joyride” singer of “TiK ToK,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has since been certified 12-times platinum by the RIAA.
“When I was writing ‘TiK ToK,’ it was weird, because the dumber it got, the better it got,” explained Kesha. “Which was confusing, because I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent human being. But it just got dumber and dumber and better and better.”
“When I listened to the final product,” she added, “I was like, ‘This is too dumb.’ And it’s like 1.5 billion streams at this point.”
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Kesha in May 2025
The songwriting process was quite different from how Kesha learned to craft lyrics from her mom, Pebe Sebert, who found success from composing the country song “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You,” which Dolly Parton recorded and released in 1980.
“My mom’s a songwriter, and she taught me how to write songs since I was little. I would go to the studio with her and fall asleep in the guitar case,” she recalled. “I would come home from school, and I’d be like, ‘Mom, this boy was mean to me,’ and she’d be like, ‘Write a song about it.’ It was, like, how we dealt with everything as a family.”
Whether she’s writing “dumb” lyrics or drawing from real-life experiences, Kesha gets to make every music-related decision herself these days as the CEO of her own label, Kesha Records, through which her new album . (PERIOD) will be released on July 4.
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Kesha and Jennifer Hudson in May 2025
“This is the first album that I have legal rights to my own voice,” said the “Yippee-Ki-Yay” artist, who was previously signed to RCA Records. “I’m really excited for the world to hear this because I’ve been in control of everything. I’ve written every song, co-produced everything. It’s my own record label, it’s been all of my vision, all of my words, a lot of hard work, a lot of joy.”
Kesha described the album as “really coming back home to myself and feeling what freedom really looks like, feels like, sounds like.”
“Boy Crazy,” the next single from . (PERIOD), comes out Friday, May 16.
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