If T-Pain is the king of auto-tune, then Ke$ha is almost certainly its queen. Though the pop star worked to deemphasise its use on her second and significantly less-successful LP "Warrior," Ke$ha's debut album - the 2010 monstrosity that is "Animal" - remains one of the most soulless examples of computerised drivel in the history of pop music. Noted songwriter and producer Butch Walker once likened the auto-tune movement as a whole to "Ke$ha and T-Pain screwing on a slot machine in a casino at 2 a.m.," but Ke$ha's bizarre rap-pop music might actually be better approximated by the sound a slot machine being destroyed by a baseball bat. The hits from "Animal" - "Worst Song of All Time" candidates like "Tik Tok," "Your Love is My Drug," "Blah, Blah, Blah," and "Take it Off" - are drenched in alcohol and and loaded with digital effects. There's not a semblance of artistic integrity in any one of them, and they all could have resulted from someone playing around with ProTools and trying to create the worst sounding trash imaginable, but neither of those things could keep mainstream pop listeners away. In fact, if T-Pain was like the joke that nobody got, then Ke$ha was pop music's best approximation of a computer virus; a dreaded Trojan Horse that systematically infected everything and everybody who was making or listening to pop music in 2010 and 2011. Personally, I still have a hard time believing that anyone was actually capable of deriving enjoyment from the songs on "Animal." Heck, even Billboard commented on Ke$ha's overuse of computerised production, claiming that the pop star had misplaced her personality and individuality somewhere in the labyrinthine web of identikit songs like "Take it Off." If even Billboard calls you out on overproduction, you're definitely doing something wrong.
Craig is a Chicago-based freelance writer who like to talk incessantly about music on AbsolutePunk.net. He also does writing for marketing companies to "pay the bills," but his true passion lies with the pop culture sphere.
