KESHA

About

When Ke$ha burst onto the scene in 2009 — rapping through an Auto-Tune filter about brushing her teeth with whiskey and boys trying to “touch [her] junk” — the then-22-year-old quickly positioned herself as pop’s resident troublemaker and made the charts her home. In sales week that ended two days after Christmas of 2010, her bratty debut single, “TiK ToK,” smashed the record for highest single-week sales for a female solo artist with 600,000 digital downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan (the previous record-holder, Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance,” sold 419,000 one year earlier), and soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Dr. Luke- and Benny Blanco-produced anthem took just 11 weeks to top the chart, holding the peak position for nine weeks on its way to becoming the longest-running No. 1 debut single by a female artist since 1977, and the highest-selling digital single of all time, second only to the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling,” with almost 14 million copies sold. Billboard