Kesha is getting real about her breakout hit – Tiktok, and honestly, it’s not what you’d expect.
While TikTok basically defined a generation when it dropped in 2009, Kesha admits she didn’t even want to release it at first. On a recent episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show, the pop star revealed that she thought TikTok was just “too dumb.” Yeah, the song that kickstarted her career and has racked up over 1.5 billion streams almost didn’t make it out of the studio.
“When I was writing TikTok, it was weird, because the dumber it got, the better it got,” Kesha said with a laugh. “Which was confusing, because I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent human being. But it just got dumber and dumber and better and better.” She added that after hearing the final version, her immediate reaction was, “This is too dumb.”
But obviously, the world didn’t agree. TikTok exploded, became a party anthem, dominated the charts, and turned Kesha into a household name overnight. And it’s wild to think it all started with a song she almost kept on the shelf.
What’s even more interesting is how Kesha learned to write songs in the first place. Turns out, it’s been a family thing all along. Her mom, Pebe Sebert, is also a songwriter and has written tracks for artists like Dolly Parton and Pitbull. Kesha grew up surrounded by music, often tagging along to the studio and even falling asleep in a guitar case as a kid.
She said, “I would come home from school, and I’d be like, ‘Mom, this boy was mean to me,’ and she’d be like, ‘Write a song about it.’ It was, like, how we dealt with everything as a family.” That kind of upbringing clearly laid the foundation for Kesha’s raw, emotionally charged songwriting style.
And it’s not just a career, writing songs is something she considers deeply personal and powerful. In her first TED Talk, Kesha described songwriting as “sacred.” For her, pop music isn’t just fun beats and catchy hooks, it’s a form of emotional alchemy. “What else in the world can change your mind, can change your mood, can change your entire energetic frequency in three and a half minutes?” she said. “For me, that’s pop music, and for me, that’s alchemy.”
She also shared that songwriting has always been her safest outlet. Whether she’s on a high or feeling completely wrecked, writing music is how she processes everything. “Songwriting is a direct line of communication with the truth,” she said. “In song, you can say things you can’t say out loud to anyone else, not your friends, not your therapist, not your mom.”
It’s clear that while TikTok may have seemed silly to her at first, it still came from a place of authenticity. That mix of raw feeling and fun chaos is exactly what made the song hit so hard. And maybe that’s the real secret to its success. Kesha didn’t try to make something perfect or profound, she just let the energy flow, even if it felt “dumb” at the time.
Now, looking back, she’s able to laugh at how unsure she was. Because while TikTok might have started as a joke in her head, it turned into a global phenomenon, and the song that launched a pop career nobody could ignore.
