Kesha’s bold comeback with ‘Period’ - pop star’s return to musical roots

KESHA burst onto the music scene with a distinctive brand of blunt, electrifying pop that seemed designed to take the dance floor by sheer force. Then came the genre-hopping.

- ETHAN BECK

It's nothing new for a pop star to pivot. Claiming maturity, sonic growth or the need to express something raw, musicians from Beyoncé to Lana Del Rey to Post Malone have recently asserted their indie, country or rock bona fides. It’s rare for these pivots to go off without a hitch. For Kesha, a string of such sonic shifts have led to Period, a semitransparent bid for yet another career reset.

Period is particularly confounding after 2023's Gag Order, on which Kesha abandoned her party girl persona and reinvented herself as a purveyor of haunting, minimalist art pop. (Her earlier surprises include dabbling in rock on 2012’s Warrior and a collaboration with Dolly Parton on 2017's Rainbow.) The guttural, Rick Rubin-produced album marked Kesha’s furthest jump from the Obama-era electropop that made her famous.