Hometown: Los Angeles.
The lineup: Kesha Sebert (vocals).
The background: If it's autumn, it must be time to launch a new teen-pop girl – Katy Perry's Ur So Gay was released in November 2007, and this time 12 months ago the world had yet to witness the godlike genius that is Lady Gaga. Yesterday's new artist had a rough, colloquial charm that should appeal on a local level, but one imagines today's newbie's record company have rather bigger ambitions for her. There's a pretty obvious clue right there in her name.
Ke$ha is an unashamed wannabe – her MySpace URL is myspace.com/keshaishot, under "sounds like" on her site she's written simply "God having an orgasm", and she once sneaked into Prince's house in an attempt to get him to produce her music. There isn't a single shred of self-doubt or sense that her career could go either way with this 22-year-old singer-songwriter who spent her formative years in Nashville and has since been terrorising the talent scouts of LA. So far, everything has gone right for her – her collaboration with rapper Flo Rida, the Dead or Alive-sampling Right Round, reached No 1 earlier this year, her songs have featured on various TV shows including Melrose Place, she appeared in Katy Perry's video for I Kissed a Girl and sang backing vocals on Britney Spears's Lace and Leather. Now she's working on her debut album with producers Dr Luke and Max Martin, whose combined credits – Avril, Miley, Kelly, Pink, Katy, Britney – read like a who's-who of glossy hi-tech faux-raunchy pop-R&B with Auto-Tuned yodelling (yes, yodelling).
Maybe she really is raunchy, but just in case we doubt it Ke$ha takes pains to telegraph her bad-girl credentials. In fact, her whole shtick appears to be predicated on the idea that she's a rebel in American Apparel. There's a girl group called Millionaires, a Stateside Saturdays-cum-Dolly Rockers, whose brazen approach to self-publicity – a track called I Like Money, going on something called the Get F$cked Up Tour – has clearly influenced Ke$ha. Her music is like an über US version of "chav pop" – trailer trashy to the max – only it's so full-on it's almost like some postmodern arthouse joke. "She reminds me of girls I run into on Friday nights, full of bravado and cheap beer, throwing signs like damn fools," wrote one blogger. "I have no doubt that she will do very well."
She's already got hip-hop cachet, having appeared on Flo Rida and Pitbull's albums; she even rhymes "crunk" with "my junk". Now she wants decadent rocker status, too. In the lyrics to her debut single, TiK ToK, she brushes her teeth with Jack (Daniels, not Tweed), there's a creepy reference in the lyrics to Mick Jagger, and she generally makes like Pink circa Get This Party Started on speed. She lives a Dionysian existence in the seven-bedroom Laurel Canyon mansion where the Eagles recorded Hotel California and where apparently it's "one fucking insane night, coming home half-drunk and stumbling", after another. The running theme of one of her songs is how she vomited in Paris Hilton's closet, on Backstabber she tells the titular two-faces to "shut your fuckin' mouth", and she's got a thing for transvestites – Take It Off is about getting turned on by men at a drag show and she's just filmed a viral video "with a bunch of trannies". Meet the degenerate Hannah Montana. "I've always been loud and obnoxious," she says. Now she needs to channel some of this manic energy in the studio, because apart from the brilliant robo-R&B of Boots and Boys, her music is mostly generic chart pabulum and that dishevelled mane is fooling no one.
The buzz: "TiK ToK is going to be the I Kissed a Girl of this fall/winter."
The truth: We would love a wild cyber-pop chick to beam down on Planet Pop. But they'd have to be better than this grab-bag of ciphers.
Most likely to: Stay up late and go really crazy.
Least likely to: Vomit in Paris Hilton's closet.
What to buy: TiK ToK is released on 30 November by SonyMusic.
File next to: Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus.
Links: myspace.com/keshaishot
Monday's new band: Chase & Status