Today I Learned...

Apparently the conversation actually started with someone daring someone else to find subtext in the most vapid, unsophisticated artist they could find: Ke$ha. My friend looked closer, and was shocked to find there's actually maybe something there. She mentioned this to me, who naturally watched every video repeatedly and took notes so I could hammer this out. So without further adieu

Some running themes in Ke$ha videos:

1. This woman is not as desirable as she thinks she is.
Evidence:

• In "Tik-Tok", there is one guy who expresses any interest in her, and he's a creepy 1970s type.
  
• In "Stephen", she refers to the hundreds of guys who want her, and yet she is stalking, drugging, and kidnapping this guy. Stephen is also the only man in any of her videos to look like he belongs in the current era.
  
• It looks like a man gives her roses in "Stephen", but if you look very closely, she pays him.
  
• "Blah blah blah" is all about getting guys to stop talking to her so they can get to the screwing, but no one actually expresses interest in her. There's a 70s looking guy who she hits on *extremely* hard, but attacks if he responds. There's another guy she just moves straight to ducttaping.
  
• Two characters (although not Ke$ha herself) are checking out PlentyOfFish.com while DJing the party in "We R Who We R".
  
• "Hitting on dudes. Hard" ("We R Who We R")
  

2. This woman is much older than she imagines herself to be.
Evidence

• The men in "Tik-Tok", "Blah Blah Blah", and "Your love is my drug" all have a very 70s look to them. The only exception is the the titular "Stephen", who she is stalking.
  
• The reference to hot pants in "We R Who We R". The modern term would be booty shorts, or short shorts if you need a two syllable term.
  
• The reference to Mick Jagger as a pinacle of attractiveness in "Tik-Tok"
  
• Or for that matter, referencing P. Diddy as the standard for partying. How long ago did he lose that name? And how long has it been since he had any culture relevance?
  
• In "Take it Off" she talks about her gold trans am. The last trans am was made in 2002, and its golden era was much much earlier. The car in the video looks very old, although I don't know enough about cars to date it precisely.
  
• Interesting note: there is a gold car that might be a trans am in "Tik-Tok", lending a lot of credence to the idea that the videos take place in a shared universe.
  
• More references to youth than you would expect: "We're young and we're bored" ("Blow"), "We dancing like we're dumb/our bodies going numb/we'll be forever young" ("We R Who We R")
  
• one of her posse in "We R Who We R" is a much older woman wearing a leopard print unitard.
  
• The turquoise jewelry in "Your Love is My Drug" and the opening frame of "Stephen"
  
• "Do I make your heart beat like an 808 drum" ("Your Love Is My Drug"). The 808 drum machine came into use in the early 80s.
  

3. This woman has a serious mental illness.
Evidence

• "Maybe I need some rehab", "I'm all strung out", "If I keep it up like a love sick crack head", "I don't care what people say/the rush is worth the price we pay/I get so high..." ("Your Love is My Drug")
  
• In "We R Who We R", the music fades out in the solo shots. It culminates with her falling backwards off the 20+ story building, only to be caught by the partyers.
  
• "Tik-Tok" also cuts between her partying and her alone, this time in a grungy looking white room.
  
• "Your love is my drug" has visuals usually associated with hallucinogenics.
  
• "Stephen"'s lyrics are very clearly about her stalking the title character, and the visuals take this even further: she drugs and kisnaps him.
  
• There's an easy case that the people dissolving into glitter in the empty pool in "Take it Off" is a drug metaphor- especially the guy trying to pull someone out and losing his arm to glitter. Also, it's hard to tell on account of glitter!, but I'm pretty sure a good number of those shots are time reversed.
  
• "Lose your mind/Lose it Now" ("Take it Off")
  
• "Drink that kool-aid", "It's time to lose your mind and let the crazy out", "We're pretty and sick" ("Blow")
  
• "Blow" starts out with her telling some men with unicorn heads how she got elected to parliament by forcing a bear to apologize. The unicorns will go on bleed rainbows.
  
• The firearm foreshadowing in "Blow" during the chorus ("This place about to blo-OW"), is frequently aimed at her head.
  
• You can make a reasonable case that the man she kills represents a part of herself. Especially when he copies her sexy take-my-bra-off-under-my-clothes move.
  
• "Tik-Tok" starts with her in a bath tub in what is very strongly implied to not be in her house. It ends with her in a different, much grungier bathtub, suggesting she's either been there the whole time and hallucinated the partying or is in a downward spiral- possibly "Tik-Tok" is referring to this count down.
  
• When the lyrics "Trying on all our clothes" are sung in "Tik-Tok", she is in fact wearing the clothes she slept in and presumably wore the night before.
  
• The screen does a fade/blur thing during the lyrics "Trying to get a little bit tipsy" ("Tik-Tok")
  
• "It's time to kill the lights/And shut the DJ down/(This place about to)/Tonight we're taking over/No one's getting out" ("Blow")
  
• Most of "Blah blah blah" looks to be about guys at clubs, but near the end, she's doing the head grabbing/tearing out the hair "make the voices stop" motion. She wouldn't be the first person to attempt to medicate a mental illness with sex. (see also: "Your Love is My Drug")
  
• There's a repeating motif of juxtaposing her partying with lots of people and her utterly alone. See: "We R Who We R", "Take it Off", "Tik-Tok" (some of which takes place in a white room)
  
• There's another repeating motif of things being noticeably worse at the end of the video than the beginning. See: "Tik-Tok", "We R Who We R", "Stephen", "Take It Off". The big exception is "Blow", and see below for that.
  
• Overall, the lyrics seem to be a lot more honest about the costs of constant partying than would be indicated by the tempo. See: "Get my drunk text on/I'll regret it in the morn/ing" ("Take It Off") "I laughed/'cause I was completely trashed" ("Stephen"), "Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack" ("Tik-Tok"), the entirety of "Your Love is My Drug"
  

4. There's some weird patriotic imagery I haven't figured out

• Her shirt in the main thread of "Tik-Tok" is battered but has a recognizable American Flag theme
  
• Her golden bicycle in "Tik-Tok" has a tiny American flag on it
  
• The douchebag she hooks up with in "Tik-Tok" has red, white and blue headband and his fanny pack has an American flag on it.
  
• She's got a flag themed leotard on for part of "We R Who We R"
  
• In the white room shots in "Tik Tok", she's wearing a flag themed cloth around her wrist, and is still wearing it in the finale scene.
  
• In the last shot of "Tik Tok", she's holding either an actual flag or a flag themed towel.
  
• In the SNL Performance of "Tik-Tok", she's wearing an American flag cape
  

5. inter-video continuity:

• The jewelry in the framing shots of "Stephen" is similar, but not identical to that in "Your love is my drug". I mostly haven't included links because I don't trust them to stick around, but check out "Your love is my drug" at 31 seconds and "Stephen" at 6 seconds. Or it could be identical to jewelry on her other hand- the clearest shot I have is at 80 seconds, but it's not very good.
  
• "Take it off" refers to a gold trans am. The car in "Tik Tok" is definitely gold, and my car friend says that it's almost certainly a knock off impersonating the iconic 1978 gold Trans Am. However, the car in "Take it Off" is definitely not a trans am and is probably a 1967 Buick Skylark.
  
• You do not want to know the amount of work it took to notice and document these similarities.
  
• As I've mentioned before, 90% of the men she interacts with in her videos have a 70s porn vibe to them
  
• Ke$ha shot and released her own video for "Take it Off" in addition to the official one. It feature her turning into a jaguar, and "Your Love is My Drug" features her with a white tiger head. Although I kind of think this one is a stretch.
  

6. misc.

• Most of her songs have references to "we" and the videos show a posse, but only "Your Love is My Drug" has references to friends, and her mom ("won't listen to any advice/Mom's telling me I should think twice").
  
• I also think the narrator is considerably younger in this video than others, based on both those lines and "can I ask you a question/do you wanna have a slumber party in my basement."
  
• In "We R Who We R", she very deliberately points to her bare neck during the line "Got Jesus on my necklace." I'd dismiss it as the video people not wanting to be pushed around by the lyrics, but they very deliberately match visuals for "glitter on my eyes" "stockings ripped all up the sides", and "looking sick and sexified". And she is actively pointing at a necklace she doesn't have. And she has a cross earing in another thread.
  

Given this, I would like to propose the following unifying field theory:
The woman whose story the album is telling is substantially older than Ke$ha the artist. She's been self-medicating a mental illness with sex, drugs, and partying for years, and it's catching up to her. Faced with leaving the lifestyle, recognizing her true age, and getting clean, she instead decides to drug herself even harder, recognizing on some level that this will kill her. Either "Your love is my drug" tells the story of either the relationship that destabilized her or introduced her to drugs (it's also the first song of the album), or this relationship is continued in the song "Stephen", and is simply the first manifestation of the illness, or it's referring to an actual drug. "Tik-Tok" (second song on the album) is where it gets bad: The chorus is a countdown to self destruction. "Blow" is pretty near the end (note that Blow came out on the EP that accompanied the original album).

I'm still working on the flag imagery.