Emerging onstage from the middle of a collection of vertical LED banks and strapped with a guitar modified to resemble a machine gun — which she "played" for a couple of minutes — it seems that Ke$sha is trying to send us a message: she is a naughty, naughty girl.
But don't let Ke$ha's Clockwork Orange-inspired eye makeup fool you: there's nothing deviant about her vapid party girl lyrics, though she clearly has a knack for writing infectiously catchy tunes, the kind designed to get lodged in the back of your brain for obnoxious stretches of time.
Take her delightful ditty Dinosaur: "Old man why are you staring at me/Mac on me and my friends, it's kind of creepy/You should be prowling around the old folks' home/Come on dude, leave us alone..."
Not exactly Joni Mitchell. Then again, nobody endorses creepy old men save for creepy old men, so no harm, no foul. And the young girls in the crowd enthusiastically shouting the chorus, "D-I-N-O-S-A, you are a Dinosaur!" made it clear that Kei$ha's lyrics are right on the money.
Unfortunately, her penchant for auto-tune and heavy reliance on tracking vocals made it difficult to tell whether she can actually sing. A betting man might say she's just another overproduced studio singer whose 15 minutes will Tik Tok away tout suite. Time will tell. And if that's the case, hopefully Kei$a's smart enough to save as many dollar signs as she can before the clock runs out.
Rihanna, who took the stage almost 30 unfashionable minutes late, floated out from the back of the stage in a long black dress covered in red LED lights that looked like it might have taken roughly that amount of time to get into. It was quickly stripped off though to reveal a racy number underneath for Hard, while a sextet of dancers writhed on top of a pink tank and Rihanna straddled its long barrel.
