Peter Kramer/NBCKe$ha's latest hit song took a hit overnight.
"Die Young," which is currently No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 ranking all singles and No. 1 on the music magazine's pop chart, was pulled by many radio stations in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 first-grade children dead.
According to tracker Mediabase, "Die Young" potentially reached 167 million listeners on Friday, 164 million on Saturday, and by Monday, the number of listeners had dropped by 19 million.
"I understand," Ke$ha tweeted this afternoon in response to the news. "I had my very own issue with 'die young' for this reason. I did NOT want to sing those lyrics and I was FORCED TO."
"I'm so so so sorry for anyone who has been effected by this tragedy," she added, "and I understand why my song is now inappropriate. words cannot express."
Ke$ha was one of many celebs who reacted via Twitter in the hours immediately following the shooting last Friday morning, and she also posted a link yesterday to a site for people to donate to the victims' families.
The unofficial consensus among station reps basically was that it was in poor taste to spin her tune about partying like there's no tomorrow in light of last Friday's tragedy.
"We've been playing it before Friday but not since, and I think we're now done with it," Rich Minor, programming director at WDAQ-FM in Danbury, Conn., told Billboard. "Even though it's a fun pop-dance record about seizing the moment, all people are going to hear right now is those two words in the title."
Sandy Hook also happens to be 11 miles away from them, according to Minor, who said that Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks"—which for all intents and purposes is about a school shooting—is also music non grata at WDAQ right now.
WODS-FM in Boston said that they initially pulled "Die Young" out of rotation on Friday, along with David Guetta's "Titanium" due to its lyrics about being "bulletproof, nothing to lose," but that both were reintroduced to the lineup today and there have been no complaints.
UPDATE Dec. 20, 2012: In a blog post on her site, Ke$ha attempted to clarify her remarks. "After such a tragic event I was feeling a lot of emotion and sadness when I said I was forced to sing some of the lyrics to ‘Die Young.' Forced is not the right word," she wrote, referring to her earlier comments on Twitter. "I did have some concern about the phrase ‘Die Young' in the chorus when we were writing the lyrics especially because so many of my fans are young and that's one reason why I wrote so many versions of this song. But the point of the song is the importance of living every day to the fullest and staying young at heart, and these are things I truly believe."