You guys, I love Ke$ha. Were you aware? She’s just so consistently hilarious and trashy. Love her. So, naturally, this summer when I found myself with a group of young children whose group was called “the dinosaurs,” my first response was to chant the first two lines of Ke$ha’s brilliant song, “Dinosaur”:
D-I-N-O-S-A you are
A dinosaur!
But then, to my horror, a 9-year-old girl said, “That’s a Ke$ha song!”
In one of my uncoolest-ever grownup moments, I blurted, “You are way too young to listen to Ke$ha!”
“No I’m not! I have her CD!”
“Well!! Ke$ha is not camp appropriate so we’re not going to sing any more of that song, okay! I just wanted to make sure everyone knew how to spell dinosaur!”
Let’s revisit those lyrics, shall we?
D-I-N-O-S-A, you are a dinosaur
D-I-N-O-S-A, you are a dinosaur
An O-L-D M-A-N, you’re just an old man
Hitting on me, what? You need a CAT scanOld man, why are you staring at me?
Mac on me and my friends, it’s kind creepy
You should be prowling around the old folks home
Come on dude, leave us aloneAt first we thought that it was kinda ill when
We saw that you were like a billion
And still out tryna make a killing
Get back to the museum
Of course! Just what every nine-year-old girl needs to be listening to. Of course, the first CD I ever bought was Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, and I was in 6th grade. I was listening to her sing about going down on someone in a theater and I had no clue what that meant. If you had forced me to define it I probably would have guessed that Alanis was sitting on someone‘s lap. And anyway, I thought “Ironic” was a way better song. So deep, Alanis!
So, although my inner old person feels that nine-year-olds need Ke$ha the way someone of legal drinking age needs a black fly in their chardonnay, the truth is that girl probably thinks the song is about actual dinosaurs.
D-I-N-O-S-A you are a dinosaur
Kids have been listening to music that was “inappropriate” for them since Elvis. Or earlier. I don’t know, I’m not a music historian. I’m just an avid Ke$ha fan who will one day learn how to keep her mouth shut around tween girls.