Ke$ha Says New Single Addresses Teen Suicides

"We R Who We R," Ke$ha's brand-new new single from her upcoming Cannibal EP (due November 22nd), may be be a synth-heavy dance anthem, but it has a deeply serious theme: the 23-year-old pop star tells Rolling Stone that she wrote the track after reading about the recent rash of teen suicides, including that of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University freshman who in September jumped off the George Washington bridge after a roommate revealed that he he was gay.

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"Hopefully it will be an anthem for weirdos — for real people," she says of the track, which includes the chorus "Tonight we're going hard / Just like the world is ours / We're tearin' it apart / You know we're superstars / We are who we are."

Ke$ha continues: "I was really affected by the suicides that have been happening, having been subject to very public hatred [myself]. I have absolutely no idea how these kids felt. What I'm going through is nothing compared to what they had to go through. Just know things do get better and you need to celebrate who you are. Every weird thing about you is beautiful and makes life interesting. Hopefully the song really captures that emotion of celebrating who you are."

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"I just felt like people hate because they don't understand or they're jealous," she adds. "It's all coming from a very negative place and I really feel like people don't need to pay attention to that."

Last week, Ke$ha recorded a video for It Gets Better, a project that intended for teens targeted by homophobia.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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