By Henry Walsh
Arts Reporters
For the past two weeks, celebrity news has orbited around one major figure: Kesha. But as the pop superstar undergoes a legal battle that has been put under a surprising amount of scrutiny, not everyone involved in the conversation knows all the facts. So before you go making any judgements, make sure you know the history of Kesha Rose Sebert and her alleged abuser, Lukasz Gottwald.
In 2005, Kesha signed with Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald’s production company, Kemosabe Records, a subsidiary of Sony, after the producer first listened to her demos. Gottwald had the 18 year old drop out of school for the music business. The deal they created was set to last for up to six albums, at Gottwald’s discretion.
One year later, Kesha felt ignored by Gottwald, who was swamped with other projects after his work on Kelly Clarkson’s hit album “Breakaway.” She signed a deal for management from DAS Communications and officially changed her name to Ke$ha, the dollar sign a nod to her financial struggles at the time.
Two years later, she terminated the contract with DAS. Now, looking back, she says Gottwald “intimidated and convinced” her to fire them, which is extremely similar to the language used by DAS themselves to describe the firing.
In January of 2009, Flo Rida’s “Right Round,” which featured Kesha and was produced by Gottwald, was released. This song was, technically, her first big hit, even though her appearance on the song is accidental (she happened to wander into the studio where the song was being recorded just as Rida realized he needed a female voice). Rarely credited and allegedly never paid, this track could not count as a Kesha song on anything other than a technicality.
Kesha’s debut single “Tik Tok” was released in August of that year. A song best described as beautiful trash, the piece managed to spend nine weeks at number one, become the best-selling single of that year and top charts in eleven different countries. The album that followed it sold 4.5 million copies worldwide.
In May of 2010, DAS filed a lawsuit against Kesha, claiming she owed them $14 million in commissions for work they’ve gotten her since the termination of her contract and that Gottwald owed them another $12 million.
A year later, Kesha gave a deposition stating that Gottwald never made sexual advances towards her in a continuation of the case. Now, her lawyer claims she said those things under threat from Luke.
From January to August of 2012, Kesha participated in recording sessions for her third album, Warrior. The sessions were intense and contentious, with Kesha wanting a more rock and roll sound and Gottwald insisting on the same dance-pop she’d been cranking out for her entire career. He scrapped almost all of the seventy songs she wrote, including her favorite, “Machine Gun Love.”
In March of that year, the DAS case was decided. After being told to pay 55% of the money they claimed she owed, Kesha immediately appealed, claiming that DAS was acting as an unlicensed agent, which is illegal in the state of California.
That December, her song “Die Young” was pulled from the airwaves in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting. In response, she tweeted that she was “FORCED to sing” the chorus. Later, she deleted the tweet, but not before it had garnered a large amount of publicity, not all of it positive.
In October 2013, she even responded to a question about whether she had any creative control over her music with “not really.”
The following January, Kesha checked herself into rehab for an eating disorder. According to TMZ, she told the doctors there that Gottwald had drugged, physically abused, and sexually assaulted her. Once out of rehab, she dropped the dollar sign and returned to her birth name.
On October 14, 2014, Kesha filed a lawsuit against Gottwald claiming that he had subjected her to sexual assault and battery, sexual harassment, gender violence, civil harassment, unfair business, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. She went into detail as much as she could, even describing two terrible incidents in which she says he raped her; once on a plane and once after giving her GHB (the “date rape drug”) disguised as sober pills. She doesn’t remember the second event, but recalls that she woke up naked in his hotel room.
In response, Gottwald filed a suit of his own, a defamation case against Kesha, her mother Pebe Sebert, and her manager, Jack Rovner. He claimed the accusations were false and a roundabout way of getting her out of her record deal. Later that month, he filed an identical suit in Tennessee, in case Sebert tried to get out of the lawsuit by claiming it didn’t apply to her since she lives in Tennessee.
In February of last year, Kesha filed an injunction request, asking for the ability to immediately end or change her contract with Sony. Regardless of the court’s decision, it quickly became clear that her career would suffer irreparable harm if she wasn’t allowed to record until the legal issues were finished.
That June, she amended her original claims, broadening them to suggest that Sony had known of Gottwald’s behavior with her and other artists and turned a blind eye. A few days later, Gottwald won that battle.
On Feb. 3 of this year, Gottwald’s original suit against Rover and Pebe Sebert was dismissed, leaving only the Tennessee suit active.
Finally, we have the most recent development that has sparked general outrage from the music community: Two weeks ago, Kesha’s request for a preliminary injunction was denied. There was a huge outpouring of support for Kesha, with artists like Lady Gaga, Demi Lovato, and Taylor Swift making public declarations that they stand behind her.
Since then, it has come to light that this decision was made because Sony is allowing her to record without Luke’s involvement. He still gets a portion of the profits, however, and this has been called an “elusive promise” in which the label will allegedly not promote the project, dooming it to fail.
