Demi Lovato
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Kesha"s New Video, Praying, Reminds the World She"s Divine
Jerry Seinfeld has never been less relatable than when he refused to hug Kesha. Because she"s wonderful.
The "Tik Tok" singer has been locked in a legal battle with Dr. Luke, whom she accuses of years of sexual abuse, and her music career has been on hiatus. Reportedly, Kesha"s been desperate to get back to work and get her new music out there.
And now we have her new song, "Praying," along with it"s vibrant and captivating video, below. We"re not going to use the word "shooketh" but that would be an accurate description. Watch for yourself and see what we mean.
Kesha has been taking back her life, piece by piece, and this music video seems like exactly the comeback that she"s wanted and needed all along.
Actually, let"s be real — it"s also the comeback that we"ve needed from her.
Visually, Kesha takes us on a spiritual and perhaps religious journey.
(Spirituality and religion are related, but in a Venn Diagram sort of way)
Suffice it to say that the symbolism and imagery is not subtle.
Kesha appears to be dreaming or hallucinating or spiritually projecting or whatever while adrift at sea, stranded and weak and lamenting that she can"t even seem to die to end the suffering, all in black and white.
On land, in color, she slumbers in colorful attire while two men in business suits wearing pigs heads (it is wildly unsettling, you guys) stand over her, thick drool dribbling from their open mouths.
We see Kesha, conscious, in multiple contexts and costumes.
In one, she"s dressed as an angel and playing a keyboard and singing.
We also see her walking past a row of old-timey televisions that each have white signs for screens, some with horrible messages that she"s likely received on social media (body-shaming, political nastiness, etc), and others with typical dystopian messages (like "CONSUME").
Among her other outfits is a veil with little butterflies all over it, but honestly our favorite costume for the whole video has to be the one with golden feathers that form a collar.
(Quite frankly it looks like something that Ravenna would wear, which is peak fashion goals)
She smashes one of those dystopian television signs — one that reads "Weapons of Mass Deception."
Cute, right?
She also is chased by and fights off the pig-heads.
The music picks up and her powerful vocals become impossible to miss.
And no spoilers but the ending involves both a whale and a rainbow.
First and foremost, we should probably talk about some obvious influences.
Because you can"t really talk about "Praying" without talking about Beyonce"s Lemonade.
The use of color isn"t new for Kesha, but the still and quiet opening with poetic narration?
That"s straight out of the Lemonade playbook.
To be clear, we"re not accusing Kesha of copying Beyonce, precisely.
Great artists — truly great artists — inspire others to follow in their footsteps, creating new trends and styles in the process.
We"d never in our lives seen anything like the journey that watching Lemonade took us on.
But Kesha"s adventure is very different.
The setting is much more whimsical, and the subject matter is entirely different.
As the music builds, Kesha — even the version of her on a raft — seems to have some sort of spiritual awakening.
In a sense, that"s what the whole song and video are about (among other things).
In terms of the religious imagery that you"ll see, it sort of falls into that trap that a lot of (but not all) New Age-y spirituality does.
Like, Christian imagery absolutely takes center-stage, which is too much for most religious minorities.
But then the presence of non-Christian imagery and some of the more agnostic lyrics won"t win over many Christians, either.
You know, though, you don"t always have to appeal to everyone in every thing that you do.
Art is ultimately about self-expression and communicating that to others.
Kesha does that very successfully with "Praying," in terms of both the song and the video.
We"ve always known that Kesha is beautiful and has an amazing voice.
But in case you"d somehow forgotten, this music video will make it hard to miss.
Watch and enjoy for yourself.
We"ve already watched it a half-dozen times, easily.
Patton Oswalt: Engaged to Meredith Salenger!
Just a few weeks after the rumor mill started to churn with questions over whether Patton Oswalt was dating Meredith Salenger, the couple has come out and confirmed its relationship.
Actually, Oswalt and Salenger have done a lot more than that:
They’ve gone ahead and gotten engaged!
An insider has confirmed this unexpected news to People Magazine.
It has been broken just under a month since Oswalt and Salenger walked the red carpet together for the Los Angeles premiere of Baby Driver.
Typically, of course the love life of Patton Oswalt would not be considered a big deal in celebrity gossip circles.
But the comedian suffered a personal tragedy about 15 months ago when wife Michelle McNamara died unexpectedly in her sleep, leaving the actor to care for their eight-year-old daughter, Alice Rigney.
Since that unimaginable event, Oswalt has been very open about his struggles to move on.
In August of last year, for example, he penned a personal essay that compared depression to grief.
“Depression is the tallest kid in the 4th grade, dinging rubber bands off the back of your head and feeling safe on the playground, knowing that no teacher is coming to help you,” Oswalt wrote on Facebook at the time, adding:
“But grief?
“Grief is Jason Statham holding that 4th grade bully’s head in a toilet and then f-cking the teacher you’ve got a crush on in front of the class.”
To be more unique and specific?
“Grief makes depression cower behind you and apologize for being such a dick,” Oswalt explained.
Oswalt and McNamara got married in 2005.
He said last summer that he was “face-down and frozen for weeks” after she passed away from an accidental overdose.
“It’s 102 days later and I can confidently say I have reached a point where I’m crawling,” Oswalt wrote in this same post. Which, objectively, is an improvement. Maybe 102 days later I’ll be walking.”
About a year later, thanks to Salenger, it certainly sounds as if the star is maybe even running.
“They met through mutual friend Martha Plimpton,” an insider tells People of the engaged twosome. “They started chatting as friends and it blossomed from there.”
Since making their public debut last month, Oswalt and Salenger have been candid about their feelings on social media.
“We are at “Dorky Disney T-shirt Relationship Level”, from which no one returns. GREAT CTHULHU WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!?” Oswalt wrote in response to Meredith sharing the following snapshot of the couple:
Salenger also posted a picture of Oswalt on a beach in California, flexing whatever muscles he has in his arms.
“The love of my life,” she wrote as a caption, referring to Oswalt also as “my funny hunny.”
Replied Oswalt on Twitter: I prefer “clown who’s down” but whatever.
Meredith Salenger is a Harvard-educated actress.
She received her first major break in the industry at age 15 in Disney’s The Journey of Natty Gan.
She has credits in a number of television shows and movies; including Lake Placid, Hollywood Heights and voiceover work for cartoons like Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
We wish her and Patton Oswalt nothing but the very best.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)