This is the Kesha you know and love.
After the July 6 release of "Praying," her first single in four years, the pop star premiered her second single, the more up-tempo "Woman," at midnight Thursday. As she recounted in an essay for Rolling Stone, she brainstormed the song's core lyric ("I'm a motherf--king woman") while driving to the recording studio to meet her writers Drew Pearson and Stephen Wrabel.
"I was really feeling that conviction one particular day while I was stuck in traffic on my way to the studio and out of nowhere I felt the urge to scream, 'I'm a motherf--king woman.' By the time I got the studio, I was chanting, 'I'm a motherf--king woman.' The two men I was writing with that day didn't quite know what to do with me. I proclaimed again: 'I'm a motherf--king woman!'" she writes. And though she's "always been a feminist," Kesha explains, "For much of my life I felt like a little girl trying to figure things out. In the past few years, I have felt like a woman more than ever. I just feel the strength and awesomeness and power of being female."
"I just really f--king love being a woman and I wanted an anthem for anyone else who wants to yell about being self-sufficient and strong," she adds. "(Yes, men, this song can be for you too.)"
Kesha calls that day "one of the best writing sessions of my life."
After finishing the demo in L.A., Kesha joined The Dap-Kings horn section in their Brooklyn recording studio to "put the finishing touches" on the track. "I knew we had a good song but since the day we wrote it I had wanted that Dap-King special sauce to take it to the next level."
"Praying" and "Woman" will both appear on Rainbow, available Aug. 11. "Musically, I really couldn't be more proud of this record," she writes in Rolling Stone. "I think that this album sonically sounds more like the music I listen to than anything else I've ever done in the past."
"With 'Woman,' I hope my fans will hear that wild spirit still strong inside me, but this time it was created more raw, spontaneously and with all live instrumentation, which I found was a huge reason I loved the records I did love. There were one or two or 12 different people playing real instruments together, and all that real human energy is exciting and very fun to listen to," the 30-year-old singer adds. "I wanted this song to capture that organic, raw, soulful sound and keep the imperfect moments in the recordings because I find the magic in the imperfections."
Kesha co-directed the video, shot at Delaware's Oddity Bar, with her brother. "It was one of those projects where I knew exactly what I wanted and it was just easier to do it ourselves than try to explain my vision to another director," she writes. The singer adds that she's "most proud" of the fact that the song and video "never lost the pure joy from the day it was birthed."
"I really hope people enjoy this song because I had the best time making it. I hope that energy passes through people and the fun is infectious. It's important for me that people know that there are a lot of emotions on my new album Rainbow—but the wild fun energy that first inspired me to perform has not, and will never, go away," she says. "I'm still a motherf--kerrr."