Call her Kesha or Ke$ha (the latter pronounced like 'cash-ah'), the Tik Tok singer is a garbage-chic blonde with a flair for the dramatic.
Case in point: she once trespassed in legendary musician Prince's Beverly Hills mansion - which she claims was unsurprisingly lined with purple velvet - to drop off a demo. (Incidentally, both have shunned conventional use of letters for names. Between 1993 and 2000, the now 52-year-old Prince adopted a made-up, unpronounceable 'love symbol' for his name, and was known in the media as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince).
'His security kicked me out, but not before I left him my demo CD wrapped in a giant purple bow,' she says. No charges were laid against her - but no record deal came from her venture. Well, not directly through Prince, anyway.
Released a year ago, Animal, her platinum-selling debut album featuring the single Tik Tok, topped the Billboard Hot 100, and other charts in 11 countries. Just 10 months after that record, she released the EP Cannibal (also available as a two CD deluxe edition called Animal + Cannibal), which includes eight new tracks and a remix of Animal.
Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, music was an integral part of Ke$ha's life. Her single mother, Pebe Sebert, was once a singer for a punk-rock band and taught her the craft of songwriting.
'I thought everyone grew up in a recording studio,' Ke$ha says, a belief based on her tagging along to recording sessions with her two brothers Lagan and Louis. Pebe supported her daughter's interest in singing and realised her vocal potential. 'My mom always told me, 'You have a good voice, so practise singing,' so I'd sing everything all the time,' she says. Sometimes, Ke$ha would play recording artist for a day and sing on tracks her mother was working on at a real studio.
