Kesha, Even With a Liberated New Album, Remains Tied to Dr. Luke
For the last year, as the cases wound slowly through the system, Kesha
and companies closely affiliated with Dr. Luke have worked together on completing “Rainbow.” The album will be released by Kemosabe Records — a subsidiary of Sony Music started in 2012 as a joint venture with Dr. Luke — and RCA, another Sony label, with Dr. Luke still standing to profit off an artist he first signed more than a decade ago.
On Friday, Kesha will release “Rainbow,” her first album since “Warrior” in 2012, chronicling, with an inspirational bent, her years of personal and professional turmoil on songs like “Bastards,” “Let ’Em Talk” and “Learn to Let Go.” But she will do so under the same extensive recording and music publishing contracts with Dr. Luke (born Lukasz Gottwald)
that existed before she claimed in a 2014 lawsuit that he had for years “sexually, physically, verbally and emotionally abused” her.
So even if Sony is distancing itself from the producer — he has worked on just one song, Big Boi’s “All Night,” by a
Sony artist this year — he may profit from her affiliation with Kemosabe via KMI, which ultimately owns her work.
“It was a collaborative process, just like the making of a typical album,” said Christine Lepera,
a lawyer for the producer, adding, “Everything proceeded with the full support of Luke.”
His team argues that this arrangement — with Dr. Luke working in an approval capacity,
but not hands-on with the album — could have happened all along.
Though #FreeKesha became a cause célèbre — at its height, Taylor Swift said she would donate $250,000 to support the singer — and her comeback has been greeted by fans as a victory and a rebirth, it follows a string of legal defeats
that prevented Kesha from releasing music outside of her deals with Dr. Luke.