Before it was a popular video sharing app, "TiK ToK" was the breakout hit for Kesha, who was going by "Ke$ha" at the time. It was the first single from her debut album,
Animal.
Before recording the song, her resumé included co-writing The Veronicas single "
This Love," providing background vocals to Britney Spears' "
Lace and Leather," and most notably, belting the hook on rapper Flo Rida's chart-topping "
Right Round."
The opening line, "Wake up in the mornin' feelin' like P. Diddy," is what got Kesha rolling for this decadent number.
In an interview with
Esquire, Kesha explained: "One morning I just woke up, and I live in this house with I-don't-even-know-how-many roommates - it's this Laurel Canyon house with seven rooms and roommates fluctuating monthly." She added: "Well it was the house The Eagles recorded
Hotel California in. So it's just this huge hippy... There are a bunch of hippies who come in and out, and there are all these people sleeping on the couches. I don't really care, I don't mind it. But I woke up one day after we went to a party, and I was surrounded by 10 of the most beautiful women you've ever seen. And I was like, I'm like P. Diddy - there's no man like this in the entire world. So that became the first line of the new single, and we just went from there."
P. Diddy is Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy), who at the time epitomized lavish excess and party culture. Kesha was horrified when he was
accused of sexual misconduct, and in 2023 she changed the opening line to "Wake up in the morning feeling just like me" when she sang it live. A year later, it became "Wake up in the morning feeling... f--k P. Diddy."
The song was released on August 7, 2009 and got a boost when it was featured in the September 15, 2009 episode of Melrose Place. It didn't enter the Hot 100 until October 24, but from there it caught fire, reaching #1 on January 2, 2010 as radio stations jumped on it.
American actor Simon Rex, who played George Logan in Scary Movies 3 &4, appears as a character named Barry in the song's music video.
That's P. Diddy (Sean Combs) ad-libbing "Hey, what up girl?" and "Let's Go" after Kesha mentions him in the opening line. The story of how Kesha connected with Diddy is that after writing the first line of the song ("Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy") she took it to her producer, Dr. Luke. By coincidence, about four hours later Diddy called Luke for the first time ever, saying they should do a song together some time. Soon after, Diddy dropped by the studio to contribute his lines. Kesha told MTV News: "He agreed to come in that day. It was so bizarre, but as fate would have it, happened in the course of hours. We all were hanging out and I was so intimidated... but he was the nicest guy."
Kesha became the first female vocalist to rise to have a #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with her debut single since Lady Gaga achieved the same feat 11 months previously with "
Just Dance."
"TiK ToK" was the first Hot 100 #1 of the 2010s decade, claiming the top spot on January 2, 2010.
"TiK ToK" was a hit in the days before streaming when downloading was big. The second week of January 2010, it set the record for most single-week downloads by a female artist with 610,000, beating the mark set by Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" (419,000). The record for most downloads in a week was held by Flo Rida's "
Right Round" (636,000), which features Kesha.
Kesha's record for most downloads in a week by a female artist was beaten by Taylor Swift when her "
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" sold 623,000 in the week ending August 19, 2012.
Kesha at the time was known as "Ke$ha," rocking the $ before A$AP Rocky. She explained to Jam! Music that the dollar sign in her name was because she never benefited financially from the massive success of "Right Round," which features her vocals. She said of Flo Rida: "He's super-sweet. It's not like I blame him." Then added: "To me, it's not about the money. That's the whole reason I have (the dollar sign), 'cause it's ironic. Like, I don't care. I was so happy being broke. And I'm happy not being broke. It doesn't really affect me either way. I care about taking care of people that have taken care of me - that's important to me. But to be honest, I'm kind of repulsed by the gluttony and excesses of a lot of people in the limelight."
She dropped the $ in 2014 after a two-month stay in rehab to treat an eating disorder.
This unapologetic ode to getting totally wasted was all over the radio the week of January 18-24, 2010, when it logged 11,224 spins to set a record for the most weekly plays in the 17-year history of Billboard's Airplay Chart. Lady Gaga's "
Bad Romance" was the previous record holder with 10,859.
When Kesha's producer Dr. Luke telephoned her after hearing a demo to say he'd like to hook up with the then-unknown singer-songwriter, Nicole Richie took the call and hung up on him. At the time, Kesha and her mom were filming an episode of the reality show The Simple Life as the host family to Paris Hilton and Richie. Fortunately, he eventually got Kesha on the phone and the rest was history.
Kesha was tagged by some music publications as a white rapper thanks to her vocal delivery on tracks like this one and her next single, "
Blah Blah Blah." She told
Billboard magazine that initially she was reluctant to rap on
Animal. "The white-girl rap swagger thing is really a little bit of a joke," she said. "I never thought of myself as a rapper. This is just the way I talk."
This song spent nine weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the most for a single by a female artist since Debby Boone's "
You Light Up My Life" stayed at the peak for ten weeks. in 1977.
Kesha sings in this song about brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniel's. She told The Daily Telegraph that the lyric shouldn't be taken seriously. The singer said, shaking her head, "Everyone's really offended by that, but come on, brushing your teeth with Jack Daniel's: what girl does that? People are like, 'Do you really advocate brushing your teeth with bourbon?' I'm like, 'Yes, actually, I do, every day, for everybody. Especially eight-year-olds.' I mean, what are you talking about? Of course I don't. Come on."
Kesha performed this on the April 17, 2010 episode of Saturday Night Live with her band and backup dancers dressed as astronauts.
Benny Blanco produced this song along with Dr. Luke - they're both co-writers on the track along with Kesha. This was early in Blanco's career; he had worked on tracks by Britney Spears and Katy Perry, and was on his way to becoming one of the biggest hitmakers of the 2010s and 2020s. Kesha gave credit to him and Luke for knowing what the song needed.
"I tried to rewrite the verses of 'TiK ToK,'" she told
Billboard. "I was like, 'This doesn't make sense. Brushing your teeth with Jack Daniel's - are people going to get what I'm talking about? Is this too much? Is it clever enough?' And he [Luke] literally had to fight me off, and then Benny Blanco had to chase me out of the studio when I got a mind to rewrite it. He kept saying, 'It's good. Just trust me, it's good.'
He really lets me be myself. All the crazy s--t I say, he embraces, because he really embraced my personality. A lot of producers have tried to tone it down. And I wouldn't be as successful as I have been had I been watered down."
In 2014 Kesha
sued Dr. Luke, alleging abuse. He countersued, and they reached a confidential settlement in 2023.
The song was released as America was emerging from a recession. Kesha thinks it was good timing, giving listeners a respite. "It's a celebratory song, but it's not about bottles of champagne in the club and my brand-name clothes," she told Billboard. "It's just me talking about being somewhat of a bum and having a great time in Los Angeles."
"TiK ToK" was a worldwide hit and the biggest selling digital single in 2010. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), it sold 12.8 million copies, well ahead of Lady Gaga's runner-up "
Poker Face," which was downloaded 9.8 million times.
Following Kesha's performance of "TiK ToK" on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve in Las Vegas on December 31, 2024, the song enjoyed a surge in popularity thanks to many viewers who didn't know TikTok was a song before it was an app. It achieved its highest 24-hour stream count, with nearly 2 million streams recorded on Spotify the following day.
Kesha never expected "TiK ToK" to become such a big hit. "When I was writing 'TiK ToK,' it was weird, because the dumber it got, the better it got,"
she recalled on the Jennifer Hudson Show. "Which was confusing, because I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent human being. But it just got dumber and dumber and better and better. When I listened to the final product, I was like, 'This is too dumb.'"
Kesha's first high-profile performance was on August 9, 2009 at Lollapalooza in Chicago, where she sang "TiK ToK" in concert for the first time on an emerging artist side stage. From there she played various showcases as the song gradually climbed the charts, and when it hit, she did lots of TV performances. In the summer of 2010 she was the opening act on Rihanna's Last Girl On Earth tour; her first headline tour was the Get $leazy Tour, which launched in February 2011 after she landed another #1 hit with "
We R Who We R."
Years later, Kesha backed away from the party-girl image she cultivated in "TiK ToK," but she never dropped it from her setlists and still loves the song because it brings joy. "I think I tapped into a part of people's brains that they needed," she said on Monica Lewinsky's Reclaiming podcast in 2025. "It was a recession, I was giving them unadulterated joy and silliness and goofiness."
