Singer-Songwriter Kesha On Being Weird And Talking To Ghosts

I'm gonna ask you a question. I know the answer already. I'm gonna ask it anyway. If here's my husband, Oh hello, Okay, hey Alex, I'm interviewing Kesha right now. Okay, I don't know how you put on your sunglasses when my husband it was just a phone call. Thank god, you're listening thinking out loud. This is the very first one, by the way, but I already know what the interview with

Where do we Start?

That could be the name of the podcast, Where do we Start? So I don't even have a name for this podcast. It's so new and I don't know. I don't even you've done podcasts. I have teach me.

Okay if i'm are we going?

Yeah?

All right?

So first of all, I know nothing. I just blabber. So just blabber at me and I'll blabber back.

Let's blabber.

Yeah.

Is that another name like blabber?

That's like my specialty. I would just I mean, it depends on what you're what. Is it marketed as a music podcast?

No, it's just it's just me talking to people I find interesting. Oh, we love that, and you were on that list. It's so funny that you're in town and you're talking about your new album gag order and timing is right. Yeah, someone I'm interested in because you fascinate the fuck out of me.

Oh I love that, and I love you.

As I you good. Uh. I just when I hear you talk about the things that excite you, I know that I could admit that those things excite me as well. And I know a lot of people are listening that are closet lovers of cats, closet lovers of travel, closet lovers of philosophical study.

Yeah, anything esoteric, Yeah, I think that, Yeah, I lead a pretty weird life. So I'm here to talk about it because I haven't really talked about it while I've been incubating this album. I've been pretty insular.

Well, who are you to say that you have a weird life? I mean, it's your life. What's so weird about it to you?

I'm pretty sure it's kind of weird. Like, for example, I yesterday was at the Philosophical Research Society and you walk into this library that looks like Hogwarts, and all these beautiful books are behind glass, and there's a section for taro, there's a section for past lives, there's a section for comparative religions.

You go and you can.

Read all this ancient text about anything esoteric. Philosophical Research Library is that. So then I meet the guy who kind of runs the place, and he was like, oh, I have this closet upstairs that there might be the head of a German murderer.

And I was like, hold on, wait, ahead of a German murderer, yes, okay.

Like non specific, no one knows who he is or how they got the head, like it's all big question marks. But as soon as they said there might be a head, around. I was like, okay, I'm not leave ahead, you know exactly exactly. So I was like, yo, I'm not leaving

This is why you feel you're different than the other kids, Yes, because this excites you finding a head in a closet, but a German murderer's head. So that what if it was like a grandmother's head. It was a skull.

By the way, it was a skull. It was a skull, not a head with hair. Well, to be clear, there's.

A clear line between skull and head. I guess I do know, But so I see your point. Not everyone in this world would love to go through a bookcase hidden door into a room full of boxes and dig through them until they found a skull of a German murderer.

So why not? Why wouldn't they would? I feel like you would.

So someone's listening to this podcast now going they're about to reach to turn it off. They're like, ah, wait, hold on, let's hear this head story.

Well, we found it. I held it. I gave him a little kiss. I think he's good. He didn't have bad vibes. And that was like an average Friday.

Who did he murder?

I mean, how do we know what he d knows?

Which is like probably problematic. But so when I was filming the show, so I started with a podcast and then it turned kind of it morphed into a television show that's on Discovery Plus called Conjuring Kasha, and I would just shoot the shit with people that I found interesting and had any sort of paranormal experience or opinions. So that turned into me traveling around the country and

And then I just.

Did like ghost experiments the whole time, and I was I found like three different skeletons and you and they bought them from a catalog. So they had this catalog that's like, what kind of skeleton do you want?

There's a thing that's a thing?

Yeah?

Can I Amazon right now? And there's skeletons.

Honestly, I want Francis, can you google that?

Francis?

Can you you need to Doleton can.

Go to Amazon, particularly Amazon, because I want to use I want to use Prime and have it here by Thursday?

Does Amazon have everything?

So okay, let's let's let's let's back the truck up just for a second. Kesha. When did all this begin in your life? Your fascination with things I don't want to use the word macab because that's so limiting. But all things different than what the other kids would to talk about it forever your mom.

My mom was is convinced she's truly serious that she is an alien, which I wouldn't be surprised she was. And I just grew up and we would write songs and listen to like ram Das or we would It was always spiritual seeking. Like she took astrology in college. So it's just kind of in my blood to be obsessed with this stuff. I'm also triple Pisces, which I don't know. If you're into astrology, I don't like, what's your sign.

I'm a Leo, but I don't know if I'm a triple Leo or if I've ever if uranus is rising or whatever rising. I don't. I don't understand it, but I appreciate learning about it. Yeah, and so I don't know. If I had my chart here, I could show it to and you could say, oh, you would walk out the door, or.

You'd be like, oh, no, no, go you no.

It's really interesting because your main sign is not all that governs who you are. You have multiple houses and risings and your sun, your moon, all these different things, so.

I understand that part.

Yeah, so I just find that really interesting.

I'm trying to like have someone go through it with me and show me how to really read a chart because it's pretty confusing when you look at it. And I just signed up for a tarot card class.

I'm want to get to that in a moment. Yeah, can you order some tarot cards on Amazon? I have some at home.

I had some in my purse, but I didn't bring the right purse. But yeah, I just have always been like that. And then that's perhaps why my schooling experience was hell, because I also loved making my own like velvet bell bottoms, and apparently that wasn't cool then, and so I had like a pretty weird childhood experien answer. I didn't really feel like I could connect to that many people because they wanted to play with the dolls.

Were you lonely as a kid because of this, Yeah, a little bit.

That's why I turned the songwriting right because I would have and I've always been a highly sensitive person, which is a thing a lot of people out there that would label themselves as like, oh, I'm just like quote unquote crazy. Really, you just might be really highly sensitive, really intuitive. So I started writing songs because I felt

So you're proud of me.

Strange, I mean, I don't know how else to be.

Well, no, I mean you shouldn't. You shouldn't have been thinking about what you are whatever. You don't put yourself in any box. You are just who you are. So this resonates with me a lot. And you look at me. I'm a fifty eight year old gay guy on the radio with nothing in common with you, you would think, But the things you're saying about you and your childhood remind me of me and my childhood.

And what was your like schooling experience?

Well, you know, I was the outcast and I didn't have a lot of friends. And you know, mom and dad they both worked. I would be at home by myself every day and just watch TV and pretend to be on the radio, and you know, and I would sit in my little closet with my equipment and I would have a radio show.

And that is so sweet.

It is, But then I started thinking, how sad was I? I mean, I wasn't playing sports, couldn't. I wasn't out there, you know, being a butcher burly guy, because well I wanted to have sex with them, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean it was different than everyone, But I think it's the people who are Anyone who's listening to this right now is going, holy shit, that's me.

I'm really people.

Everyone is weird, Like I think, I told you this earlier, but I have a new theory.

This is my own.

This is the Kesha theory of relativity. We're all just babies. Okay, that's as far as I've gotten.

But we're all just giant babies.

So the formative years of like going to school and stuff, it impacts the rest of your life, right because all we are is a collection of our experiences plus our spirit. If you believe in.

That, I do me doo.

What was I talking about?

We're just giant babies.

So I think that feeling like an outcast, which I completely relate to, it made my drive so much more intense because I felt like I had something to prove to all the people that made fun of me and to myself too that I was you know, I'm not just special and strange for no good reason. I want to be special and strange and help other people feel like they can be special strange around me and feel

Well that's what this album is sort of about.

Yeah, totally.

This album is that you definitely turned a corner with this album. This one is much more personal. You're saying, yeah, you gave birth to this whole new side of you because there are other people out there that you're convinced can relate with it because they are the same way.

I mean, in a way, I hope a lot of people don't relate to the sadder songs because I want people to be happy. But I have a feeling that most humans go through the kaleidoscope of human emotion, Like I cannot be the only one that feels insecure sometimes it cannot be the one that feels full of rage. I cannot be the only one that feels kind of at the end of their rope sometimes, especially just the

I find that very relatable to almost everyone who's listening to this, most likely, I absolutely My question is this, even if you didn't have the influence of your mother and her philosophy in life, don't you think this would have been the path you would have found anyway? But if you had a mom who was an accountant and a dad who was a car dealer. Is this goes back to what is inside of you? Something's already baked into you when you're born.

Yeah, yes, yeah, I think that there is a soul. But I also think being surrounded by someone who is a songwriter so I could observe the craft, So that was always like, that's like how I grew up. I would go with my mom, she'd play shows and just put me in the guitar case as a baby. So I think how you're raised you view as normal until you go out into the world and realize maybe some of the things are not normal.

Like I thought it was normal. This is pretty embarrassing.

I thought it was normal to bathe your body.

In bleach occasionally, okay.

Until I got my first boyfriend and he was like, the fuck are you doing? And I was like, it's my normal weekly bleach bath and he was like, what the fuck are you doing? So I didn't realize it was strange until someone told me it was strange.

What made you think it was normal? By the way, for the record, I'm not saying get abormal. Your mother said you need to bathe in bleach at least once a week.

Well, if you go run through the fields of Tennessee, there's a lot of poison Ivyes, so this is according to my mother, not a doctor. Not a doctor, not advice. Okay, But then she'd be like, oh, if you think you ran through the poison'd you just like bleach your body?

So you just did it weekly?

Well I was a kid, I was like, well, my mom knows what she's talking about. Turns out not so sure. Parents all like no, everything they're talking about, which is an interesting thing you learn when you grow up.

Is it your parents are just people?

Which goes back to what you said earlier. We're all a bunch of babies.

We're all a bunch of babies.

The reason why that resonates with me as well is when my father was ninety two years old and he was about to leave us in this in this form, he looked at me and said, here's what I want to tell you, and I said, what's that? Dad? He said, you never grow up? He said, you look at me as your father. You used to think I had all the answers. You used to think that I was there to protect you because I could protect you against anything.

You're all infants, and just like having compassion for your own baby self and other people as the giant babies that they are, we're all just kind of doing our best and try and act like adults. It just made me view the world in a really compassionate way, like when you're a singer. Sometimes I say, picture the audience naked. I just picture a sea of babies.

Okay, naked babies, No, just asking asking for a.

Friend, closed babies.

All right, let's bring up a couple of things. Let's talk about ghosts. I know Conjuring Kesha on Discovery Plus. Yes, right, yes, this was what you woke up one day and said, I want to do a show called Conjuring Kesha. I want to I want to lift lift the hood on supernatural fun stuff. And you know people love that shit. I do.

I mean I do too, So I do too.

Why why do you? What got you interested in?

Honestly that not to sound like a broken record, but I always was like searching for the answers to the mystery of life, and I thought, I want to see with my own eyeballs if there is something else out there that's intangible. And I saw some pretty not explainable things while filming the show. And I am fully aware that when you watch a show, you're like, probably half

We need to know that there is something bigger than us out there, something as simple as the Grand Canyon or something as fantastic as everything.

You're discussing right you're at realm or the ocean, and just the migration pattern of animals, how whales sing to each other, they'll echo back songs from across the globe. Things like that just bring me solace and make me feel like, in a sense, we're being taken care of in a way, Like there is a cosmic natural ebb and flow, and I see it a lot in nature.

It puts us in our place as human beings. I do believe. So have you ever been on Safari? I have.

I went on a camping safari on her thirtieth birthday in Kenya and Tanzania. And there were giant hippos rubbing up against my mom's tent. Because my mom's like a trooper, She's like, oh, fuck you, I'm going.

I'm like, okay, campos don't have thumbs, they can't open your tent.

Oh my god, except for hippos are the most dangerous creature.

Did you know that?

I did know that. Have you been Tanzania four times? Africa?

It's incredible?

It is you know what. And my husband is the one who's he works at a zoo. He's worked at a zouos since he was a kid. He loves animals and he's like, we got to go in Safari. I went. It's life change changing and you know, and we talk about it on our show a lot, and I say, hey, you don't have to be a ka billionaire to go to going safari. And I have a good friend who is who is a guide in Tanzania as well, and

I love I'm like, I'm trying really hard to skirt the identity of a crazy cat lady, but I think I'm.

Failing that own it. I you know what, I I do love my cats. Do you have an animal?

Oh? Yeah, I have two dogs, but I grew up with cats, so I'm a cat and dog person, which is kind of unusual.

That's good. It means you have a beautiful heart.

I love them dogs, you know how it is love dogs, love cats, hate people.

Yeah, same, I totally feel you.

But I think that like when you love something so unconditionally, it's just like it's a beautiful thing.

I agree with that. Whales Wales, the song whale songs? Yeah, do you ever just put your headphones on and listen to that for all?

Oh?

Yeah, there.

I've definitely sampled whale songs in my music right underneath tracks. Like people won't know it sounds like a synth and it's really actually a whale song. I've gone free diving, like free swimming with whales in the wild, no captivity, like I am here, not no captivity. But in the middle of the open ocean near Tonga, there's one of the two places in the world you can swim with whales. And it's so human the interaction because they come up and look you in the eyes. I recently for my

I don't know. This is what I spent all day thinking about.

Well, and we should we should study animals. God knows they study us. Oh, I know absolutely. I like dogs. For instance, my dogs they'll know. They'll run to the door fifteen minutes before Alex gets home from work.

They know.

They know.

Animals know.

Then some people say, well he gets home at the same time every day. They have a built in clock, you know. Oh please, cats have like a they have GPS built in. You could take a cat four states away that cat will get home because they have a grid of the planet in their head, they know exactly where they are at all times. It's a part of what we wish we had.

Totally, and I think we supplement with like our phones, right, But sometimes I get worried that if we have all that information externally, we're gonna lose the retention of information in our brains. So I try to limit my time on social media and stuff.

You sure there's nothing good out there? I looked for you. I give you a pass.

The past couple of days I have been looking as like my guilty pleasure. I like looked up what people thought of the music, and then I went down like a pedro Pascal, like rabbit hole.

It's so hot, without doubt, Oh my.

God, Like it's a problem.

See you do like me? You do? You fly down these holes and you're just like God, before you know what it's like an hour later, like what the fuck am I to do with my dad? Let's talk about tarot cards. I wish we had.

I wish I brought my deck.

I mean do you, I mean, how advanced are you?

No? Not? Not not.

I just have a collection of decks from like there's one deck from the seventies, one of the eighties, and then I.

Just got Alistair Crowley deck and like, so I'm I'm trying to get better.

I'm about to enroll in a course, think about going back to school, but like hippie school, to some hippie shit.

Okay, I'll go with you.

Like, I don't know, I don't know exactly what I'm doing in life.

Where is hippie university?

Well, I think I'm going to take classes at the Philosophical Research Society.

Okay, Well they've got skulls of dead German murderers up there. What can go wrong?

They're legit that thing.

It's fun, Okay, terror cards. I had other things. I want to talk to you about traveling. You had an interesting experience in Iceland. I was there, but I had to work. I couldn't get out and enjoy.

Did you see it like the icebergs?

I didn't see it. Shame on me. Talk talk to me about traveling for you. Why everyone should have a passport?

I think that it just opens up your perception. It opens up the perspective of different culture, different people, different languages, and I feel like a more whole person. When I see how everything else works, like it inspires the music, it inspires the visual, It inspires me to want to learn other languages, and inspires me to want to connect with other people.

And I don't know, it.

Just makes me feel really grateful when I travel. So I've been trying to travel as much as my schedule allows. But like with this end goal of like when I'm old and gray and all things are sagging to my knees and no one wants me to romp around on stage in a unitard any longer. I kind of am trying to figure out how on earth does a woman get paid to travel around and just get massages?

What's that think? The only one asking that question right now?

I don't know, but I'm putting it out into the world.

So if anybody out there can think of a way where I just get smushed at, like every I'm on in the world, right, sign me the fuck up.

I'm with you, Take me with you. I could go on for hours and days with you. I wanted to talk about other things, like what's it like later in life when you were young and famous? Did it fuck you up at all? Be young and famous? Does it fuck people up?

I mean only my experience, but absolutely it's incredibly confusing to be like a boss at twenty two when you don't know you're face from the hole in.

Your ass, but you acknowledge it now.

Yeah I knew it then too.

I was it was just do you feel like you're at the surface yet? I mean, are you out of like I'm not a kid anymore? Yeah?

I mean I think, as I said, I think I'll always be a giant baby, but I feel like a little more grounded. I'm a very grounded giant baby, which.

I love, Ladies and gentlemen, the grounded, the.

Grounded, most world's most grounded giant baby, giant baby.

I just love that you spent some time with us.

And I always love seeing you anything you want. We can shoot the shit about whatever you want, whenever you want.

I just I just love when you merge in because I know you're busy, and I know you're busy trying to catch a flight to the Africa or where the fuck you want to go. I want nothing for you but love, peace, magic, travel and and love yourself and happiness. And you tell your mama said, hi, I always do.

She loves you.

She's like obsessed with you, and what a great gift she gave us with you. Oh my gosh, to be perfectly honest.

Thank you.

I love you so much. I'm like, I didn't really promote the album at all.

Oh there's an album out.

I am putting out an album May I'll do all the hard work. My album is called gag Order. It's out May nineteenth. I worked with the incredible Rick Rubin, and it is unlike anything I've ever done, and it's unlike anything I've ever heard.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most. How much did you have to put this album out? Oh?

Beyond Yeah, Like my my brain would have exploded. Like I'm not even kidding. All this stuff had to come out. I think that's how making artworks. It's not necessarily a choice. I think you're channeling some sort of source energy that's encouraging you to spill your guts all over a page. And the intention behind it all is obviously to help connect people, because I think that's why we as a society are so addicted to our phone and social media,

There you have it, gag Order. And I know one thing about this album is it has nothing in common with your next album. No, because your universe is spinning really fast. Oh gosh, thank you so much for being here today.

Yea, love you, Thank you for having me.

Love me. Mark fascinating Kesha. I could go on and on and on with her. That's the thing about this podcast. I only want to have guests. I want to go on and on and on for hours with Kesha. Definitely an incredible being her album gag Order. Of course you can hear all about how she's feeling about life and love and lack of love and everything right there in the album. She lays it for you, as she just