Seven years ago, when Kesha made her dbut, doused in glitter, she occupied the role of pops mononymous misfit with charm. Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack, she sang on Tik Tok, a massive, wacky earworm that effortlessly made its way into middle-school dances and bars in 2010. In the videos for Tik Tok and her other hit, Your Love Is My Drug, her jeans were ripped and her hair was mussed. (Back then, she spelled her name as Ke$ha, a joke about how broke shed been before making it big.) On her first album, Animal, she seemed averse to sincerity; for the most part, she strutted past balladry for the thumping hedonism of late-aughts E.D.M. She barely even sang. More often, Kesha rapped, sort of. Interestingly, there seemed to be no sex in her voiceonly brashness, and a buzzing, single-girl aggression.

When she did sing, as when she wrote songs, Kesha was best at sounding anonymous, and many of her own songs featured Auto-Tune. Slowly, though, and strategically, Kesha began to reveal the original rasp of her voice, exchanging vaguely warped trip-hop for sensual rock. There seemed to be a realization, sometime around the 2012 release of Warrior, that Kesha was more than a fun-house mirror of commercially packaged femininitythat she might be the real thing. A listicle about the number of songs that people probably werent aware she had written, for herself and for other artists, became popular on music sites. (Those other artists include Ariana Grande, Flo-Rida, and Alice Cooper; her talents are strangely malleable.) In 2014, she dropped the dollar sign. It became widely known that her mother is Rosemary Patricia Pebe Stewart, the songwriter who penned Old Flames Cant Hold a Candle to You for Dolly Parton. Old demos surfaced revealing Keshas ear for blues and sorrow. Like Lana Del Rey , or the intrepid young songwriters Charli XCX and Bebe Rexha, Kesha was versed both in party clich and heartfelt testimony.

She has also showed strength. For the past three years, the artist has pursued a suite of lawsuits against the producer Dr. Luke (Lukasz Sebastian Gottwald), formerly of Sony, whom she accuses of sexual assault and battery, sexual harassment, gender violence, unfair business practices, and infliction of emotional distress. (Gottwald denies all accusations, and has not faced criminal charges.) Keshas fight to release herself from the terms of her contract has initiated debates about the structural misogyny of the music industry and, more generally, the unchecked ways men may dictate the futures of the women they have harmed. Notably, the ordeal prevented Kesha from releasing any new music. Instead, she has performed covers, sometimes mournfully. Last year, before a court date, she uploaded a video of herself, taken in selfie mode. I cant put out new music, but I can sing a little of someone elses songs, of something that exists, she said, before singing Amazing Grace.

The release of Rainbow, her third album, was facilitated by a court decision allowing Kesha to record without the producer. (The decision upheld the contractual relationship; Dr. Lukes name appears on the albums liner notes.) On the Technicolor cover, Kesha stands like a trippy Venus, naked, in a cartoon pool, her back turned to us. Many have been impressed by the lushness of the albums sound, by the way that her grunts and groans meet soaring piano. Praying, the first single, which came out in July, is, as Rolling Stone put it, triumphant. But Kesha also understands that grungy irreverence has always been her skill, and that it is compatible with the grandiosity of hope. Woman, an anthem track, balances gloss and gravity with a touch of grime. Its an empowerment song of the storied Bills, Bills, Bills ilk, about shaking off no-good men and forging independencethe kind of song that could provide a soundtrack to the sequence in a feel-good romantic comedy in which a woman gets a style makeover. That movie would have an adult rating: no one says the word motherfucker quite like Kesha. On Woman, she sings it and its derivatives over and over again, employing it like a happy cudgel. Im a motherfucking woman, she exclaims, Im a motherfucker. The cursing rings like a genuine release; her profanity lifts the song out of triteness. The funk ensemble the Dap-Kings match her brass, filling the chorus with staccato horns. Around the second verse, Kesha breaks off for a momentprobably giggling about the silly lyrics, loosey as a goosey and were looking for some fun. Its sweet to hear her laugh.

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Kesha's Liberating New Anthem, Woman - The New Yorker