Crazy Kids | Ke$ha featuring will.i.am

Rating: ★★★★☆

Ke$ha had a tough battle with her most recent album. Warrior has thus far failed to garner even half of the amount of the attention that she got with her previous releases. Even the most successful single from the album, "Die Young," backfired when it was pulled from rotation late last year after the mass shooting of students and faculty at Sandy Hook Elementary. She's gone as far as hooking up with MTV to make a television documentary, on which she drank her own urine, but not even that pumped up enough buzz. Now it's time for a new single, but despite the good quality of "Crazy Kids," I don't think the tables are going to turn for this struggling pop princess.

"Crazy Kids" isn't anything different when compared to everything else released from Ke$ha. It's got her signature sing-rap style in the verses with an incredibly catchy chorus. I've like the song every since the release of Warrior, but I never really said much about it in my review of the full album.

The instrumental track for the song is similar to that of Marina and the Diamonds' "Primadonna" in the fact that the verses contain the heavy bass and excited sound that I would expect the chorus to have, while the  instrumental of the beginning of the chorus is held up by some chords strummed on a guitar and some whistling. It's very strange for me to hear a song have more climatic instrumental tracks in the verses than in the chorus repetitions, but it works well for this song.

The one thing that annoys me about "Crazy Kids" doesn't even concern the song, but rather how her record label is marketing it. The single edit that is being marketed features the always-obnoxious will.i.am. The solo version of the song that was originally featured on Warrior was so good, so why did she and her record label decide to add that pest to the song? Katy Perry did the same thing when she added Kanye West to "E.T." and it pisses me off; Ladies, your songs are perfect when you're singing them solo, so don't feel the need to add some trashy rapper to it just to promote your album. Sometimes these artist have to think about what would sound the best instead of what would sell the best. Honestly, Ke$ha's latest album has already commercially failed, so I don't know why her label's so concerned about sales; It might be too late to worry about sales now, and would take a small miracle to change that.

I'm kind of sad that the Warrior era has completely failed commercially, because the album really wasn't that bad. It was an average pop album, but because of a few stand-out tracks and the improvement from her previous albums, I was so close to giving it a four out of five stars rather than just three. But considering I still haven't heard the song on Top 40 radio, I really don't think that "Crazy Kids" is going to save the era unless it becomes some sort of massive sleeper hit. I really hope that "Supernatural" becomes the next single and may perhaps publicly shed some light on Warrior.

Now, please keep in mind that my review is only for the song, but while we're here, let's talk about the scary video. For the entirety of the Warrior era, Ke$ha has been trying to pull in the self-proclaimed 'outcasts' and 'freaks,' and apparently has been trying to hard, as evident as it is with this video for "Crazy Kids." First thing I noticed? The cornrows. Why? Why does she have to purpose to random crap with her hair and make herself look terrible? The cornrows don't compliment her at; however, the other hairstyle featured at the end of the video does. When Ke$ha cleans up her hair, brushes it out, and straightens it some, she looks absolutely beautiful. Why can't she do that more often?

As beautiful as she may look at the end, the plot and setting of the video are just as confusing and weird as the video for "C'mon." In this video, she's at a house party with a will.i.am spaceman, two giant dogs, and some old men with giant bellies.  I'm not sure if that's the part of the video that is suppose to attract her fans, but I hope she knows that it's not working quite well. It's just getting her a lot of awkward stares and giggles.

So, to recap, I like the song. I like it a lot, but the inclusion of will.i.am is irritating and unnecessary, and the video doesn't do it justice. In fact, these two things did the song more harm than they did good, which is why I'm giving my rating based on the solo version as well.  It's a great pop song and I really hope it gets the attention it deserves, but I doubt that will happen because the United States is too infatuated with Macklemore and Bruno Mars to listen to anything else.