Kesha has always made music for the ones who don’t quite fit — the glitter-covered misfits, the too-loud, the still-figuring-it-out. You know, the animals, as she calls them.
In this conversation — one of her most candid — Kesha talks about what it actually means to be queer, and how long it took to figure that out. She reflects on growing up in Nashville, dragging her mom from church to church looking for a community that didn’t come with conditions and eventually finding her people at a punk rock drag bar in California. And she talks about what, after that search, it feels like to now stand on a stage with a Pride flag behind her and a whole sea of queer people in front of her during The Freedom Tour.
The tour arrives on the heels of 2025’s “.(Period),” her sixth studio album — released on July 4th, no less, on her own label, Kesha Records. Independence, in every sense of the word. If “Rainbow” was the album she made for her future self, a promise that one day she’d be happy and free, well. Here we are.
I want to start by acknowledging that your whole career has been dedicated to making space for the weirdos and outsiders of the world.
I love that. I’ve always felt like there’s a part of myself that was not totally socially acceptable, not totally normal, not totally perfect, always reinventing, a little bit messy, needed a little bit of work. I’ve never felt truly perfect and ready to go.
Hearing you say that makes me think of your song “Spaceship,” from the “Rainbow” album. I listen to that song and it reminds me of being a kid and it gives me the feeling that I felt when I was 10 years old and didn’t fit in.
Honestly, I love that song and I love that you’re pulling out a deep cut. That song means so much to me.
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I’m sure it means a tremendous amount to a lot of your queer following.
My god, I hope so. I hope the whole catalog is for us. And I just think back to when I was in high school and I remember being in a marching band and being like, “I just don’t feel the same as everybody else, and I can’t be the only one that feels like this, but I don’t know how to connect to my people. Where are my people? I must have people out there, but where are they?”
Do you know when you put your finger on your queerness? Did it take a while?
Well, I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, so we’re talking the South. And I would be obsessed with this community and connection to something bigger than myself. I loved all of that. And then when it would get to the point in the church where being queer or loving someone of the same sex was a sin. Then I’d be like, “You’re losing me here because how can love of any type be against God? God is love.” It doesn’t make sense to me, and so I would literally make my mom drive me from church to church. I had my first kiss at a superchurch. And then one summer in high school, instead of having a summer, I went to Columbia University in New York and studied religion and psychology behind religion because I just couldn’t figure out what the fucking problem was.
It takes a long time to unpack those layers if you grew up in the church. I went through the same thing.
Yeah, and it’s really isolating as a member of the queer community to feel like you want community and connection, and a connection to a higher purpose and higher self, but be ostracized from the place that creates that community. I think that’s never sat with me well.
I’m thinking about that kid right now — and I’m also thinking about you on stage for The Freedom Tour. What does it feel like when you connect those two people?
Well, I think I’m really proud of myself, because when I was 14 or 15 years old, I remember sitting outside in a parking lot listening to a demo I had made that was like some song called “Pink Champagne,” or something like that, which I’d never had champagne. And I’m sitting outside in my shitty beat up car and being like, “If I ever make it, I’m going to make a place for people like me and you,” to my one queer friend. And I feel really proud that with the help of amazing people and incredible loyal animals, we’ve created that with each other and for each other, and I feel so grateful to my fans for showing up and allowing me to do what I do. And I hope that they really celebrate themselves and enjoy the space because everything I do is to create a safe space for people to live authentically and freely.
When that Pride flag appears on the screen behind you during this tour, what does that feel like for you?
I know how much it can change your life if one person can just radically love you. I want every single person there to know that exactly as they are, I radically love them and the space that I create is for them and they belong. And it’s so important to me.
Does the crowd get louder when that flag gets flown?
Always. It’s for us. Because I was born in America and I belong here and so do you, and so does every person in that crowd and I will create a safe space. Even if elsewhere doesn’t feel so safe, I will try to create that safe space forever.
How does it feel to be creating this safe space inside a venue when you know what’s happening to the queer and trans community outside of it?
It’s never fully made sense to me the levels of hatred and vitriol that come towards the queer community. I come from really a place of not understanding where that hate comes from, so I just want to create light, I want to create love and I want to create space for that. I’m traveling around the world, not only this country, the whole world, and it pains me. There is so much heartbreak, like a heartache when I see people treating one another with hatred, and that just is across the board. So I try to create these little bubbles of light and love. And hopefully you’ll feel that when you come to the show.
When did you first realize queer people were seeing themselves in your work?
Right when I first put music out. I moved out to California and was like, “Well, I don’t know where I belong.” And then I was in Nashville and I found the punk scene and I found the one gay bar and I was like, “OK.” I was in the marching band. I was on the softball team. I was like, “OK, I kind of belong in these places.” But then I came out to California and it was when I went to the Silver Platter, which was this kind of punk-rock drag bar, and I was like, “Oh shit, these are my people. These are my people.”
I was just so inspired by the scene. It was both so playful and light and fun and joyful and celebratory, but it was also cool as fuck. And you could tell that that joy was an act of resistance. It wasn’t just joy and like life had come easy. This was hard-fought joy by these performers and these people in this bar, and I really related to that very deeply and cellularly.
You’re making me think of this arc between two albums. “Rainbow” to me felt like an album about survival and rebuilding yourself and “.(Period)” feels freer and more sexually uninhibited. Do you see this new era as the person that “Rainbow” was fighting to become?
Oh, I love that. Yeah. Listen, all of my music is just me processing my life in real time. So sometimes I listen back to a song and it just feels like I’m listening to a therapy note. [Laughs.] I think “Rainbow” was me definitely processing what was going on at the time, but also was a little bit of a love letter to my future self. So I love that you put it like that. It was definitely kind of a promise to a girl who was like, one day I will be happy and free and here we are. So I think you’re right.
Yeah, I’m not sure you’d be as sexually liberated on this album if you didn’t make “Rainbow.”
Oh my god, I love that, because I remember making an album cover for “Rainbow.” It’s just a funny story: I was running around on the beach in this sparkly jumpsuit and my mom was there and she was taking pictures on her phone. On the way home she showed me and was like, “Wow, you just were really running around naked.” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” She showed me a picture and it was like the emperor’s new clothes. I definitely thought I had clothes on. Turns out totally see-through, and that was what ended up being the cover of “Rainbow.” So maybe it was a little premonition of my sexual liberation.
And now we’ve got the “Origami!” video. Let’s talk about how naked and queer that video is.
Totally. I love that video. I hope you like it too. It’s so campy.
Why was it important for you to put that kind of sexual freedom on screen right now?
I think that loving oneself and loving one’s body, and to the hell with everything else, is such an act of resistance in times where it feels like the world’s trying to really hijack our nervous system and put us in a state of fear and self-hatred. It’s such an act of resistance to be full of love, joy and horniness. I absolutely love being horny for life. It’s healthy. I really wanted to make a video that felt like a Jodorowsky-style sex dream, but also be true to where I’m at. I wrote this song when I was kind of going through my sexual liberation phase about a year ago. And then this year I’ve decided to be mostly celibate.
You’re busy.
I’m too busy.
You’re on a world tour. You don’t have to say it. I’ll say it for you.
[Laughs.] But so I wanted the video to really reflect both periods of my life authentically, because I think great art is the truth. So it goes from me being in Italy in a confessional, which is true. When I was in Italy, that was … I’m horny for Italy, what can I say? But then the actual song and the video are kind of immortalizing this fantasy, very psychedelic, psycho-magic sex dream.
While we’re on the topic of sex quickly, I saw a photo of you from this tour and you’re on top of a muscly guy in a harness on a chair. It looks very BDSM to me. And you’re wielding a knife. What’s going on there, Kesha?
[Laughs.] Wouldn’t you like to know?
I’d love to know.
Well, we’re just having fun. The show is actually the story of my life told through my life’s work, which is my music. So I take people to the period of my life that was the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll section. And that is a portion of the song where I’m actually kind of trying to represent the destruction of self when you lose touch with the groundedness, and in this moment I’m killing off parts of myself. It just so happens to be in the form of a hot, muscly man in BDSM gear. [Laughs.]