Throwback Thursday: Kesha, ‘The Harold Song’

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly series showcasing an album, single, music video or performance of a bygone era and its personal and/or cultural significance.

Way before Rainbow, Kesha was one of the best things about radio-made pop music. Such hits as “Tik Tok” and “We R Who We R” and “Your Love is My Drug” (all sugary-sweet pleasure, btw) never quite did her talent the service it deserved. As is often the case with mainstream artists, you have to dig into deep cuts to come to appreciate what they have to say. So, in the spirit of celebrating strong, talented women, we have “The Harold Song,” a standout from Kesha’s 2010 EP, Cannibal.

In a turn of vulnerability, a conscious effort to shed the layers of her glitter-fueled party-girl persona, she “locked myself in a room and cried like a little bitch,” she said. She molded those feelings of misery and anger into a synth-soaked mid-tempo tear-jerker, not unlike much of her early work, but she lets her heart lead the way across a scratchy and cathartic thrill ride. “Young love murdered, that is what this must be,” she bemoans over computerized layers, her voice cracking and barely slugging along. The pain is palpable on her lips, and even though she wants to dance, she can’t until she finally frees herself of the ghosts of the past. The song is “about the only guy I’ve ever been in love with – and our relationship didn’t work out, obviously,” she continued, stressing it’s emotional charge, which still sends a shock to her system. “I can’t even listen to it.”

If it wasn’t clear: Harold is his name. “He’s not getting away with a fake name. All men that date me have to know that their name may end up in a pop song. It’s the best revenge: you can’t get arrested for it, and everyone knows about it. And I like to be specific – I don’t want any of the other losers I’ve dated to think the song was about them.”

The keyboard is cutting, and the beat takes on the very life-like form of a human heartbeat, pounding underneath until the production is shredded apart like an article of cherished clothing. The heart is a monstrous organ, really, and quite resilient. It might have felt like she was literally dying, but sorrow doesn’t last forever. It’s a passing ship in the night, the silver moon cresting overhead and reflecting off the water. Her eyes might house the anguish for a time, but eventually, it’ll fade like a pair of blue jeans, baby. “I see your face in strangers on the street / I still say your name when I’m talking in my sleep,” she broods, then situating the agony as an undercover agent to her superstardom.  “And in the limelight, I play it off fine / But I can’t handle it when I turn off my night light…”

Kesha is a colossal talent and shouldn’t be brushed aside so easily. As magnificent and raw and empowering Rainbow is, a near pop masterpiece in some circles, that skill and vocal power has always been there. Her previous work was simply a sign of the times, a manufactured, easily-digestible production, but once you dig below the autotuned surface, her roar is loud, clear and bloodily ferocious. “The Harold song,” a co-write with Joshua Coleman (Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Jason Derulo), is irrefutable evidence of that.

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