搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

翻译：Jayleen Zhao

审译：Emma.Z

排版：Spencerc

The celebrated pop star’s fourth album attempts a return to the carefree party pop that defined her early career.

它给人的感觉不是继续前进，而是逃离

Kesha is a vocal supporter of underdogs and outsiders; she stands up for LBGTQ rights, women’s rights, the environment, songwriters, and gun control in a time when all are being threatened. She sews every seam of her brand with inclusivity and empowerment (“keep glowing, ur a fuckin rainbow,” she tweeted to a fan who came out as transgender). After years embroiled in a legal battle with her former producer, Dr. Luke, whom she accused of physical abuse and sexual assault, Kesha transformed her pain into the country-rock reckoning Rainbow and an emotional 2018 Grammys performance supporting the #TimesUp movement. In her colorful universe, you are believed and accepted, doused in glitter and moral support, perpetually reminded that neither tragedy nor socio-economic status define you, and encouraged to be your baddest Bitch self. It’s hard not to root for Kesha.

这位著名流行歌手的第四张专辑尝试着回到她早期无忧无虑的派对流行音乐风格。Kesha为弱势群体和不被看好的人们声援；在一个所有人都受到威胁的时代，她为LBGTQ的权利、妇女权利、环境保护、词曲作者的权利和推行枪支管制挺身而出。她用包容和赋权的方式展现她的风格(“继续闪耀吧，你就是彩虹，”她在twitter上对一名变性人粉丝说)。Kesha指控前制作人Dr. Luke对自己实施身体暴力侵害和性侵害，他们打了多年的官司后，她将自己的痛苦转化为这张乡村摇滚专辑《Rainbow》，并在2018年格莱美颁奖典礼上深情献唱，她还支持“TimesUp”运动。在她丰富多彩的世界里，你会收获信任和包容，浸润在光辉和道德支持中，并且时时刻刻提醒着你，悲剧和社会经济地位都不能定义你，鼓励你成为最真实，最酷的自己。谁会不支持这个充满正能量的Kesha呢!

Yet very little of this determination, maturity, or depth comes through on her fourth album, High Road, which regresses from Rainbow’s clear-eyed courage to Animal-era party-pop. It’s a tough pivot after everything that’s gone down, and she recycles the same innocuous frameworks she wielded a decade ago: that getting high and sleeping around don’t make you a bad person, that women are multidimensional (“You’re the party girl/You’re the tragedy/But the funny thing is I’m fucking everything,” she sings). Triteness aside, it would’ve been relatively easy to get behind an album of unfettered Kesha revelry, but High Road feels strained, scattershot, and loaded with tension, like someone trying to portray freedom and free-spiritedness–even a recovered sense of identity–who isn’t quite there yet.

然而，在她的第四张专辑《High Road》中，这种决心、成熟或是深度却几乎没有体现出来。这张专辑既没有《Rainbow》的鲜明有力，又达不到《Animal》时期的派对流行风格。一切痛苦的事情发生后，这便成了一个支柱，她重复着她十年前创造的框架，嗑药和滥交不会让你成为坏人，这样的女人是多面的（"You’re the party girl/You’re the tragedy/But the funny thing is I’m fucking everything”，“你是派对达人女孩/你真是一场悲剧/但搞笑的是我不在乎任何东西”她唱到）抛开内容陈腐不谈，在一张无拘无束的狂欢中应该很容易感受到轻松，但是《High Road》让我们感觉紧张、漫无目的、满心烦躁，就像有人试图描绘自由和自由精神——甚至是恢复身份认同感——她还没有完全做到。

“My Own Dance,” effectively a “TiK ToK” sequel, is the album’s closest thing to a centerpiece and lays out the challenge she faced: “So the internet called and it wants you back/But could you kinda rap and not be so sad?” Kesha is correct that our demands are unfair, but then she goes and fulfills them, insisting that she’s conforming by choice (“Hey! I don’t do that dance! I only do my own dance!”). This puts the listener in a confusing position: Are we to feel guilty or celebrate? It might be less uncomfortable if it felt like she’d made peace with her decision, but the song is coated in indignation: “I feel like I’m nothing/Somedays I am everything/Caught up in my feelings/Bitch, shut up and sing.”

“My Own Dance”实际上是“TiK ToK”的续集，也是这张专辑中最接近内核的部分，并展现了她面临的挑战: “So the internet called and it wants you back/But could you kinda rap and not be so sad?”（“噢/互联网在召唤/在召唤你回来/噢你能不能嘻哈一点/别这么不堪？”），Kesha说的没错，我们的要求是不公平的，但她还是去满足了这些要求，并坚持说她是自愿遵守的，“Hey! I don’t do that dance! I only do my own dance!”（“嘿!我不是你想要的那款/我自己放纵自己管!”）。这让听者处于一种困惑的境地：我们应该感到内疚还是应该庆祝？如果她能平静地接受自己的决定，或许就不会那么不舒服了，但这首歌充满了愤怒：“I feel like I’m nothing/Somedays I am everything/Caught up in my feelings/Bitch, shut up and sing.”（“有时候我感觉我一无是处/但有时候我又主宰万物/深陷在自己的情绪里/噢小妞，闭嘴唱歌吧。”）

This sense of uncertainty permeates the album, making it feel distant and erratic. Kesha has always covered a range of moods and styles—deep confessionals, party bops, twangy folk songs, bits of goofy banter—but High Road dials this up to an almost frenetic state, yo-yoing between tear-jerking ballads, overwrought empowerment anthems, and head-scratching moments of ironic nonsense. For every bizarre one-off (the chiptune inspired “Birthday Suit,” the lascivious “Kinky,” or the oddly childlike “BFF”), there’s a frothy, generic pop anthem pulling her back to the middle: “Little Bit of Love,” co-written by Nate Ruess, feels entirely anonymous.

这张专辑中的不确定感使它听起来仿佛很遥远且飘忽不定。Kesha总是能应付各种各样的情绪和风格——深刻的忏悔、派对狂欢、有节奏的民谣、一些滑稽的玩笑——但是《High Road》把这些都调到了近乎疯狂的状态，在催人泪下的民谣、过度紧张的赋权歌曲和令人头痛的讽刺废话之间摇摆。专辑中有很多风格怪诞的歌曲（芯片曲调的“Birthday Suit”，放荡的“Kinky”或天真烂漫的“BFF”）除了这些空洞的、泛泛的流行歌曲还有位于专辑中间这首与Nate Ruess合写的“Little Bit of Love”，听起来毫无特色。

She seems determined not to let you get too close. Enveloping emotional moments are often interrupted by puzzling production choices and lyrical contradictions. “Raising Hell,” a spirited ode to celebrating and forgiving yourself, featuring Big Freedia, is deflated by an insufferable horn synth that blares like a Major Lazer song. “Shadow,” an immersive piano ballad that exhibits her empathy and sheer vocal strength, is punctuated by a sour, flippant interlude (“If you don’t like me you can suck my—”, she chants). Even the title track, which attempts to frame her reaction to trauma as considered and mature, is itself defensive and sarcastic, stumbling from escapism into stoned denial. This is what makes the album’s hard-partying premise so difficult to accept: It doesn’t feel like moving on, it feels like running away.

她似乎下定决心不让你靠得太近。饱含情感的时刻常常被令人困惑的作品选择，和抒情中的矛盾打断。“Raising Hell”是一首与Big Freedia合作的激昂颂歌，歌颂庆祝和原谅自己。但它却用一种令人难以忍受的号角合成器压抑了这份激昂，这种合成器发出的声音就像Major Lazer的电子乐。“Shadow”是一首沉浸式钢琴民谣，展现了她的同情心和纯粹的声音力量，中间穿插着一段酸涩、轻描淡写的过渡（“If you don’t like me you can suck my—”，“如果你不喜欢我就请你滚开”她唱道）。就连带有防御性和讽刺性的主打歌，也试图将她对创伤的反应框定为深思熟虑和成熟的表现，从逃避现实变成了自欺欺人。这就是这张专辑的硬派风格让人难以接受的原因：它给人的感觉不是继续前进，而是逃离。

There’s no question Kesha is capable of assured, sincere truth-telling. “Resentment,” a stunning confessional featuring Brian Wilson and Sturgill Simpson, is so personal and emotionally generous that it actually feels healing, leaving you to marvel at how arresting her voice is when you can actually hear it. The lightly mystical “Cowboy Blues,” which mentions her three cats, therapist, and tarot card reader, feels relaxed and spontaneous, as if she’s writing it right in front of you. When it swells into an all-together-now dive bar singalong, lit up by whistling ooh-oohs and sha-la-las, you remember that Kesha is the rare songwriter who can funnel big, existential ideas like destiny and chance into the casual story of a night out in Nashville. These aren’t hell-raising, stadium-sized bangers about blacking out and acting up, but they are at least about her. As anyone who has wrestled with self-acceptance understands, often the most rebellious thing you can do is be your unvarnished self.

毫无疑问，Kesha有能力保证并真诚地道出真相。“Resentment”是一与Brian Wilson和Sturgill Simpson合作的令人惊叹的忏悔歌曲，非常个人化，情感也很丰富，有一种治愈感，当你真实地听到Kesha的声音后，你会惊叹于她的声音是多么的迷人。略带神秘色彩的“Cowboy Blues”提到了她的三只猫、治疗师和塔罗牌占卜，让人感到放松和自在，仿佛她就在你面前写着这些东西。当Kesha吹着口哨，唱着“oh-ooh -ooh”和“sha-la-las”的时候，你会想起Kesha是一个不可多得的词曲作家，她能把像命运和机会这样宏大的、与人类存在有关的的想法注入到纳什维尔夜晚无忧无虑的故事中。这些并不是闹着玩，像体育场馆那么大的，关于忘却和行动的东西，但至少都是关于她自己的。任何一个纠结于自我接受的人都知道，通常你能做的最叛逆的事就是做最真实的自己。