Review Summary: In Warrior, Ke$ha realizes her true potential as a pop artist, with her raw combination of discreet hip hop, a heavy infusion of contemporary synth, and the inversion of 80's cock rock, achieving one of the greatest pop albums of the modern era.
With Animal, Ke$ha took the pop scene by force only to face as much criticism as any female star had ever seen. With Cannibal, she began leading critics along to see the ingenuity in her synthpop anthems. With Warrior, she ascended to become the rock star this pop generation needed - and thought it had with Lady Gaga - but didn't realize until it was too late.
Today - that is, April 2016 - if Ke$ha gets any press, it's for her ongoing litigation against former producer Dr. Luke. But for a solid three or four years after Lady Gaga's Fame Monster EP, Ke$ha made some of the greatest pop music we've ever been lucky enough to witness, and that was realized at its zenith in 2012's Warrior.
Music critics had seen the deeper side of Ke$ha ever since she listed Dinosaur Jr. and the Sundays among her MySpace influences, featured Andre 3000 on the Sleazy remix, and namechecked Biggie Smalls on We R Who We R. On her forthcoming effort it was generally acknowledged she had to come strong to fulfill these expectations. The outcome was a combination of the sultry synthpop that had been her trademark up to this point and all the best aspects of 80's cock rock repurposed to a modern female pop star.
There are four tracks from this album that, altogether, represent this album's heights: Die Young, C'Mon, Dirty Love, and Gold Trans Am.
The first two songs were the first two singles taken from the album, and portray the absolute peak of the contemporary synth-heavy sound, as well as her explicit anthems of female empowerment. The uplifting chords of Die Young are infectious, and the flirtatious lyrics embody her image:
"Young hunks, takin' shots
Drippin' down to dirty socks
Music up, gettin' hot
Kiss me, gimme all you got
It's pretty obvious that you've got a crush
That magic in your pants is makin' me blush"
The tones of C'Mon serve as a perfect follow-up, and it's questionable which of these two serves as the best serving of her synthpop sweetness from this album, especially in the face of C'mon's lyrics, arguably even better than Die Young. Consecutive verses offer the timeless couplets "sippin on a warm wine cooler / feelin like I'm a high schooler" and "sippin on a warm Budweiser / feelin like a sabertooth tiger". She effortlessly exudes the state of mind of the apathetic teenager better than a million pop-punk bands could ever hope to do.
The next two choice cuts show Ke$ha embracing her hard rock influences and turning them on their head. "Dirty Love" features one of the most infamous headmen of rock history, Iggy Pop, and the track begins with the two giving one another enthusiastic shoutouts before unfolding into stadium rock glory. For Ke$ha, this is an unabashed celebration of sex with female empowerment, casting aside any need for patriarchy:
"Don't want your money, I've got my own
You're not my daddy, baby I'm full-grown
Don't complicate it, don't tell me lies
I'm not your girlfriend, I ain't never gonna be your wife!"
Essentially, Ke$ha turns the ideal of the 80's cock rocker on its head, arguably better than any attempts from the alt rock scene. Money? She already has it. Domination? She rules the scene. Romantic ties? She's eschewing those. And she enlists one of the most long-lasting male sex symbols in rock to accompany her, with a verse that sounds ridiculous on the initial impression but worms its way into your ears with every sequential listen:
"Cockroaches do it in garbage cans
Rug merchants do it in Afghanistan
Santorum did it in a V-neck sweater
Pornos produce it but a wild child can do it better"
The lines are absurd and completely embedded within their time. Essentially, they're everything pop should be.
The final culmination of Ke$ha's artistic ideal comes in Gold Trans Am. This is unabashedly aggressively sexual from the start, with Ke$ha mumbling "this song makes me wanna...have sex in my car" even before the opening riffs. Once the power chord riffs do start, we see the perfect mix of Ke$ha's cadence that vaguely flirts with rapping coincide with the pseudo-country chorus. It's a mix that ends well for the listener - we're even rewarded with a guitar solo following one of her secondary choruses on Gold Trans Am.
There isn't much this album lacks. It effortlessly combines the glitzy synth so prevalent in the early 2010's with a heady dose of aggressive guitar and unapologetic feminism. Here, Ke$ha truly realized her potential as an artist, and reached heights many of her contemporaries could never dream of attaining.
