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2024 has been a sort of rebirth, or year of freedom for Kesha. She started off this year having finally settled with Dr. Luke after nearly a decade of litigation, and also having officially cut all lingering contractual ties with him, his Kemosabe Records, and her management team (there was no ill will with her managers, Kesha just wanted a fresh start). With all that heavy weight put to bed, Kesha hosted a powerful TED Talk “The Alchemy of Pop,” released a hit single “Joyride,” and perhaps most radically of all, declared “I have earned the right to be this happy for sure.” Has she ever! So Kesha had all that good energy buoying her when she took the stage at Lollapalooza last week, where she only found out after her set that a prop stage knife she wielded while performing “Backstabber,” had been replaced with a real butcher knife. What the ever-loving f–k?
Kesha has revealed that she had a sharp realization about a butcher knife during her 2024 Lollapalooza set.
Following her Thursday night set at the Chicago music festival, the pop star claimed that a knife she brandished on stage during a performance of her 2010 Animal cut “Backstabber” was not a prop, but an actual utensil that was swapped out without her knowledge.
“Sooooo apparently the prop knife went missing and they replaced it with a real butcher knife stolen from the kitchen. and I didn’t know. till now,” the 37-year-old wrote Thursday on X, after she finished her set earlier in the evening.
Kesha then urged her followers to “watch that again,” with regard to the performance, in which she held the knife in her right hand, shimmied around the stage, and acted out a few stabbing actions with her backup dancers.
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Kesha and Lollapalooza for comment.
The singer-songwriter’s Lollapalooza show included renditions of songs from all corners of the “Tik Tok” performer’s career, including her new single “Joyride.”
The new single — the first preview of her upcoming album — recently went viral, fittingly, on TikTok, the same social media platform that also saw users replace audio of Kesha laughing at the beginning of her classic song “Blow” with a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris’ popular coconut tree speech and accompanying giggle. Naturally, Kesha performed the Harris remix of “Blow” during her Lollapalooza set, too.
This is so not cool. Kesha and everyone she performed with on stage are all really lucky they somehow avoided an accident. But just because no one got hurt here, doesn’t mean that Lollapalooza is off the hook for figuring out what the hell happened. Or Kesha’s team, if she brought the stagehands who switched out the prop. In fact those are my starting questions: was this Lollapalooza or Kesha staff? Did she get a dress rehearsal? At what point did the stagehands discover the prop knife was missing? Presumably it was not enough time to inform Kesha, but enough time to run to a kitchen for a real, dangerous substitute? I thought it goes without saying that at no point should an actual butcher knife be brought on stage, let alone without telling the person holding said butcher knife, but apparently this very much needs to be said! Even if Kesha was already performing when they realized the prop was missing, they should have gotten that message to her themselves or through a dancer, and she could’ve made a funny live moment of it. “Well right now I was supposed to stab my dancers with a bloody prop knife, but it’s vanished!” If Lainey Wilson can charmingly deal with her pants splitting open on stage, Kesha could definitely handle a missing prop, is all I’m saying. That and, I think maybe the stagehands would be better suited to a different job.
😳
Are they sure it wasn’t swapped on purpose? Because replacing a prop knife with a real one seems a deliberate choice.
JFC, did they learn nothing from what happened with Rust?
As with the Alec Baldwin tragedy I ask again, why are realistic looking weapons necessary for entertainment? Jesus. How about a prop knife made out of cardboard and tin foil or paint. It’s for a song and dance number – doesn’t need to be realistic.
This story is insane! Wtf!
I get Kesha has to start over again and can’t afford a team like before. Or a label providing a high-level team to execute a tour properly. And keep track of an f’ng prop knife.
But JFC who is the dingbat that thought a real knife would do over a prop. Somebody needs to be fired.
Years ago, on Dexter… Jimmy Smits accidentally picked up a real knife that had been left on set instead of a prop knife and stabbed stuntman Jeff Chase in the heart. Miraculously, Smits hit a small plastic cover that had been affixed to Chase, and Chase was badly bruised but otherwise uninjured. That’s how easily things can go wrong when using dangerous props. And we all know what happened on the Rust set.
Just don’t use it if you lose it.
Wasn’t this a Monk plot?
If not Monk, then Psych.