Kesha scored 1500 on SAT
Ke$ha scored 1500 on her SATs, dropped out 1 mo before graduating high school She scored a 1500 (out of 1600) on her SATs: “I was all set out for, like, a life of academia. I chose instead to drop out of high school like a month away from graduation and do this. I’ve never looked back, though.”
Kesha was born in Los Angeles, California on March 1, 1987. Her mother, Patricia Rose “Pebe” Sebert, is a singer-songwriter who co-wrote the 1978 single “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You” with Hugh Moffatt for Joe Sun. Pebe, a single mother, struggled financially while supporting herself, Kesha, and her older brother Lagan; they relied on welfare payments and food stamps to get by. When Kesha was an infant, Pebe would often have to look after her onstage while performing. Kesha says she has no knowledge of her father’s identity.
However, a man who called himself her father approached Star Magazine in 2011 with pictures and letters, claiming them as proof that they had been in regular contact as father and daughter before she turned 19. Two of her maternal great-grandparents were immigrants from Szentes, Hungary while her other maternal great-grandmother was originally from Poland. Pebe moved the family to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1991 after securing a new publishing deal for her songwriting. Pebe frequently brought Kesha and her brothers along to recording studios and encouraged Kesha to sing when she noticed Kesha’s vocal talent.
Kesha claimed that she did not fit in at school in the Brentwood suburb of Nashville, which she has called the “Bible Belt”, explaining that her unconventional dress sense including homemade purple velvet pants and purple hair did not endear her to other students. She played the trumpet and later the saxophone in the marching band in school, and described herself in an interview with NPR as being a diligent student.
Kesha attended Franklin High School and Brentwood High School. Kesha and Pebe co-wrote the song “Stephen” together when Kesha was 16, Kesha then tracked down David Gamson, a producer that she admired, from Scritti Politti who agreed to produce the song. She dropped out of school at 17, after being convinced by Dr. Luke and Max Martin to return to Los Angeles to pursue a music career, and earned her GED after. Around this time, Pebe answered an ad by reality series, The Simple Life, looking for an “eccentric” family to host Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. The episode aired in 2005. Luke and Martin had received one of Kesha’s demo from Samantha Cox, senior director of writer/publisher relations at Broadcast Music Incorporated, and were impressed. Two of the demos were described in a cover story for Billboard, the first “a gorgeously sung, self-penned country ballad” and the second “a gobsmackingly awful trip-hop track” where Kesha raps ad lib for a minute when she runs out of lyrics near the end. Dr. Luke stated in an interview for the story that it was the latter track that caught his attention, saying “[w]hen you’re listening to 100 CDs, that kind of bravado and chutzpah stand out.”
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