Kesha gets patriotic on the cover of V magazine’s Americana issue.

 

The eccentric blonde dons an American flag in face paint that starts out clean and ends up smeared, much like the starlet’s signature makeup. In other photos, she wears cowboy boots and an American flag dress. She’s demonstrated before that she can clean up beautifully, and she continues the trend in V, where she dished about songwriting and just how wild she and her animals can get.

K-Dollar-Sign revealed that compared to her more polished pop stars, she can kind of feel left out — but she doesn’t mind much. “I do feel like there are the pop stars of the world and then I’m like their dirty little sister, running around with s— on my face in combat boots because I can’t walk in heels,” she said. What else sets her apart? The fact that she writes all of her own songs. “Everything I sing, I write. Love it or hate it, it all comes from me.”

Her style is also quite a bit out there in comparison to her more glammed out cohorts, which Dr. Luke says makes her more relatable. “It’s tough for kids to emulate someone with twenty fashion people on staff,” he said. “Kesha comes out in an AC/DC T-shirt that she found in a dumpster, literally, and she rocks it. It’s sort of a metaphor for who she is. Anyone can be Kesha in their own way.” Kesha echoes Luke’s sentiments, calling her fashion sense rather deliberate. “I try to include my fans in my message. I do feel like there is an element of what I’m doing that is about where I come from, which is working-class,” she says. “I was never the cool kid, I was never hot in high school. I was never popular. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to be rich and you can still be successful.”

While she calls her fans “animals,” she adores literal ones just as much — so much, in fact, that she’s starring in a National Geographic series chronicling her work with wildlife. “The show looks at animals being abused and how to stop that, or animals that are going extinct and how to help those animals,” Kesha said. “I am so passionate. I like animals more than people.”

Kesha called paparazzi attention “mind boggling,” but she’s found ways to avoid it: by divvying up the time she spends in L.A. with the time she spends in her native Tennessee. “I have wild, wild nights there,” she says of her hometown, “but my friends and I are all really private. We get f—ing crazy, but you’re not going to see me stumbling out of nightclubs.”

The first record was all me living in L.A., trying to pay my rent, have a really good time, and look good on nothing. But ever since then I’ve seen how many people my music can reach, and I’ve realized that I have somewhat of a social responsibility to make sure everything I say is positive. The underlying theme of this next record is warrior, with the positive message being that everyone has a warrior inside.”

Kesha gave some deets about her new album, including on Justin Bieber‘s rumored appearance, which she remains coy about. “We’re just talking!” Fair enough (sorry Beliebers!). So who’s she dying to work with? “I would love to have Keith Richards on the record. I would sure as hell like to do a collaboration with Bieber and at the same time do a song with the Flaming Lips,” she said. “If someone is a real artist, you can’t confine them to a particular genre. It’s my mission to make it all make sense somehow.”

So what about the rest of the album? “Some people will be shocked. Some will also be excited to know that I don’t just do silly white-girl rap,” she said. “I’m from the South, I have a lot of soul. But trust me—it’s not going to be some avant-garde jazz record. I innately write pop songs. That’s just what I do.”

Kesha
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Kesha
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