Ke$ha–We R Who We R

Released October 22, 2010.
Billboard: Peaked at #1.
UK Charts: Is this released yet? I don’t know.

As an artist, Ke$ha has released a variety of singles that have elicited reactions all over the spectrum for me – Tik Tok (good), Your Love is My Drug (zzz, decent), Blah Blah Blah (bleurgh) and Take It Off (decent). Not counting her featured singles – Right Round with Flo Rida, Dirty Picture with Taio Cruz and My First Kiss with 3OH3,  this is her fifth one, and after listening to it, in terms of sound I can’t help but say that it’s more of the same. Not that this is bad, though – I did find Tik Tok very catchy, and though the premises of the song are questionable Take It Off was pretty enjoyable nevertheless.

The song’s a moderately… okay it seems pretty slow (120 BPM), actually, dance track. (I like my dance tracks on the upper side of 120, more like 130+ BPM usually.) Admittedly, I’m quite surprised with how this one somehow debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts. Then again, I guess my perspective can be pretty different from the American general populace… It’s a pretty pleasant listen, and I don’t think it’s bad other than for the two defects I’ll talk about below; though I don’t see what’s so great about it.

The song is supposedly inspired by the murders of several gay youth in America, and the theme of accepting one’s own individuality and not being put down by, well, haters. It’s a good theme to work with, though the choice of portraying such a theme via party animals doesn’t seem to go down so well…

As I said, I find 2 major defects with this song that severely hamper its listenability (for me, at least), and as you can probably guess it lies in the lyrical content. While I’m normally not too partial to bad lyrics, if they stand out as horrendous, then I think it’s perfectly valid to weight it against the song, and weight it heavily, if need be.

Firstly, and more clearly, we have the

DJ turn it up-up-up-up………
DJ turn it up-up-up-up………

Okay… this is getting a little annoying…

(lower pitch) DJ turn it up-up-up-up…….
(original pitch) DJ turn it up-up (rising pitch) – up – up……..

=(

But that’s not so critical, it’s just a particular lyric in the first verse that well, destroys the song for me…

And yes of course because we’re running this town just like a club
And no, you don’t wanna mess with us
Got Jesus on my necklace

Um… No. That doesn’t work, to say the least, and reminds me of the third of the Ten Commandments. I’m not comfortable listening to it, at all, honestly. And isn’t that what matters on a music review blog? Discomfort need not be a bad thing, but I think if it’s disconnected with the rest of the song, it IS bad, personally.

OVERALL RATING = 2.5 / 10
We R Who We R is a moderately catchy song; however, a weak and grating bridge section, combined with a line that may cause negative reaction to people having some similar traits as myself, severely hampers the song’s effect.