Kesha‘s “Tik Tok” may have defined the early 2010s, but that doesn’t mean she wants the song to define her as an artist.
While guesting on Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast, the singer-songwriter recalled how her 2009 hedonistic smash hit about embracing party sleaze caused people to make assumptions about what she was like in real life. “It’s interesting,” she said on the episode posted Tuesday (July 8). “When you’re an artist and you’re a songwriter, you can write one song, and that defines you for so long.”
“I love ‘Tik Tok’ and I love that first album [2010’s Animal], like, these are my babies,” she continued. “But I will say, to be put into a particular box was challenging. I felt like, ‘Oh, people aren’t seeing me.’”
Released in 2009 as Kesha’s debut single, “Tik Tok” spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Because of its subject matter — and its lyrics about getting “crunk,” partying until sunrise and using whiskey as toothpaste — the musician quickly developed a party-girl image that totally contradicted her real-life persona.
For instance, Kesha still recalls when tabloids reported that she had been drunk on stage during a performance in Dubai when, in reality, she had been playing through the pain of a freshly torn ACL. And, with the sole exception of her 2009 Lollapalooza set, she says she’s never had anything to drink before a show.
“Things like that have hurt me, and that people think … I don’t know, that hurt my feelings,” Kesha told Lewinsky. “Contrary to my entire public image, I’m actually quite terrified of substances. Like, I had my whiskey moment in my 20s, for sure, but anything else is pretty scary to me.”
“But I’m also very lucky that [‘Tik Tok’] hit, and I think I tapped into a part of people’s brains that they needed,” she added. “It was a recession, I was giving them unadulterated joy and silliness and goofiness and ‘F–k it, we’re having fun, I don’t care what anybody thinks.’ I do stand by it. That’s an important thing to feel.”
In the 15-plus years since its release, “Tik Tok” has remained a beloved party anthem among fans. Its cultural relevance also spiked once again in late 2023 when Kesha pointedly changed the track’s iconic opening lyric — “Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy” — to omit the disgraced hip-hop titan’s name entirely, a show of support for Cassie Ventura in light of her domestic abuse allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs.
As allegations of sexual assault, sex-trafficking and racketeering piled up against Combs throughout 2024 and 2025 — resulting in a seven-week criminal trial that finally ended with the Bad Boy Records founder, who consistently denied all of the accusations, securing a partial acquittal earlier in July — Kesha continued to omit the original lyric during live performances. At Coachella 2024, for instance, she sang “F–k P. Diddy” instead.
And on Reclaiming, Kesha recalled how she didn’t hesitate for a second to change the line after learning of the accusations against Combs.
“I was doing the Gag Order Tour,” she told Lewinsky. “I don’t even remember where I was. And I was like, ‘I’m changing it tonight.’ Everyone was like, ‘You’re insane. You’re going to change the opening line of your biggest song?’ I’m like, ‘100 f–king-percent I am.’”
Watch Kesha’s full interview with Lewinsky above.
