allystoybarn

To be perfectly clear, right from the off, I like Ke$ha up to a point. I've seen her in concert, and while I have little to no regard for her fans  I find her music fun and definitely fun to dance to, though I also quite often find her to be toeing the line of obnoxious. I don't completely enjoy all her songs, but the ones I do I enjoy to the absolute maximum. 

So, I was curious to see where her new album would go. If it would expand her repertoire or just keep on the same track of highly polished, if a little undesirable pop songs.

I wasn't expecting much of Warrior, to be entirely honest (as I said before I don't like all of Ke$ha's songs) and I'm glad of this because with the release of the first single Die Young, I was largely let down. Listen to it, it's basically a Flo Rida song with different lyrics and was ultimately only okay. And that's all I can say of the whole album, even the songs added for the Deluxe edition only tip the album into the pretty listen-able category. 

The songs are not bad. I repeat, if you like vacuous pop music, this is your album because, save for a couple of tracks which I'll talk about later, it keeps pretty much the same pace throughout the whole album. It's nothing special.

And this disappoints me. 

Warrior offers nothing new, and it's ultimately a totally pointless release because anything you want from this album, you already got from Animal/Cannibal. You can practically pair songs from both albums up, there's little distinction, and I genuinely think that Animal/Cannibal was much more interesting. It's not bad, it's just... nothing new.

However, those songs that I said were exceptions. Dirty Love (featuring Iggy Pop) is an exercise in something a little bit new, it stretches Ke$ha's repertoire slightly - even if it is still as obnoxious as ever - and I don't really like Iggy Pop's voice but they play off each other very well.

The other song that really stands out is Love Into The Light. One thing that Ke$ha is known for is her utterly unapologetic swearing and drinking attitude and you could never claim that she has much in the way of emotional commitment in most of her songs. She showed glimpses of genuine emotional acuity in the Cannibal part of her album with The Harold Song, and Love Into The Light has the same kind of tone. In it Ke$ha does the typical acknowledgement of her boozing and partying but this isn't the same obnoxious 'if you don't like it, suck it' tone that she usually employs. Instead it's "I'm sorry, but I am just not sorry" and it's softer and much less abrasive.

I'll primarily be using this as a Film, or Album, or Book Journal rather than any sort of personal posts. To be honest, not much happens in my life that's worth talking about very often, so I might as well talk about stuff that other people create with their interesting lives ^ ^

This year I've seen a bunch of films in the cinema - some only once, some several times - and I do wish I'd kept better track. But the more I see, and the more I consider them, the more I think that I'd like to do something to do with film journalism, whether it's as a career path or just as a general interest. So, think of this as practice.

Here's a grand list of films I've seen in the cinema this year, in near chronological order;

1. The Muppets (x2)
2. The Woman In Black
3. The Hunger Games (x2)
4. The Avengers (x3)
5. Dark Shadows
6. Men In Black 3
7. Snow White and The Huntsman
8. Prometheus
9. The Amazing Spider-man
10. The Dark Knight Rises (x2)
11. Dr Seuss's The Lorax
12. Brave (x2)
13. Total Recall [2012]
14. Anna Karenina
15. ParaNorman (x2)
16. Looper
17. Skyfall

Upcoming want to see;

2012
Silver Linings Playbook
Gambit
Great Expectations
Rise of the Guardians
Seven Psychopaths
The Hobbit; An Unexpected Journey (as many times as possible)
Pitch Perfect

2013
Les Miserables
Wreck-It Ralph
Cloud Atlas
Oz The Great and Powerful
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
Carrie
Iron Man 3
The Great Gatsby
etc. into the rest of the year