Ke$ha $leazes Up The Gibson Amphitheater In LA: Idolator Review
No place other than a Ke$ha concert could you hear someone shout in the women’s restroom “There’s glitter all over the toilet!” without batting an eye. And at pop’s filthiest (and proud of it) performer’s Get $leazy tour stop at the Gibson Amphitheater on Saturday, glitter was definitely the theme of the night — the shiny stuff covered her stage outfits, most of her body, and a fair chunk of the screaming, trash-talk-worshiping crowd. For fans of the pop star, the whole night was a sleazy dream come true.
A blue-lipped K-Dolla kicked off her set hidden in the dark, visible only by a pair of glowing goggles as she busted out Cannibal track “Sleazy” (though the second number of the night, the much more upbeat club jam “Take It Off”, may have been a better choice to prepare the crowd for the debauchery to come).
Over the course of the 90-minute show, she performed her hits and a few fan-favorite non-singles, and we really do mean perform: we know Ke$h isn’t afraid of drowning her vocals in Auto-Tune on her albums, but there was no lip syncing to be seen here. And what singing (as opposed to talk-rapping) we did hear from the pop star was actually quite lovely, particularly on slower tracks like “Animal” and “The Harold Song”.
Just as a performer should, she truly played to her audience, speaking to them directly between songs, pulling them up on stage, blasting them with her glitter gun, and spitting beer onto the heads of the enthusiastic pit-dwellers at regular intervals. (They should be glad she refrained from expectoration upon drinking a bottle of what appeared to be – but what we hope really wasn’t – blood.)
It was a night of bad taste, but that was basically the point. We can’t imagine a Ke$ha concert is an experience for everyone — and as someone who stood next to a parent chaperoning his 12-year-old daughter and her friends, I feel for anyone who was there not of their own accord. (Seriously – kudos to that dad’s patience as beer, spit and glitter rained down upon him all night long.) But as true fans of this knowingly obnoxious, foul-mouthed glitter maven, we honestly would have been disappointed if a group of backup dancers wearing penis costumes didn’t appear on stage.
“Grow A Pear” (Live)
“Go get laid!” she singer screamed to the crowd after closing out the show with her self-empowerment single “We R Who We R”. We hope the younger set of fans in attendance were too preoccupied cleaning the glitter out of their hair to hear that last endorsement, but like Ke$ha herself, they probably don’t take the things that come out of her mouth too seriously.
