Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 06/06/2011 at 2:12 PM News

The Popdust Files: kesha

Breaking: Ke$ha’s idea of “classic rock” is music by the Real Housewives! That is, if new leak “Tease Me“‘s similarity to Gretchen Rossi’ non-starter “Revelation” is any indication. Listen and compare below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HxGndtdBlY

Before you freak out too much, with the constant covering and recycling of tracks by songwriters among their A-list and B-list clients, this happens more often than you’d think. There was the controversy over Beyonce’s “Halo” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Already Gone,” both Ryan Tedder tracks. In less-reported news, Britney Spears’ “If U Seek Amy” uses a track awfully close to Jessie Malakouti’s (and later Heidi Montag’s) “Trash Me.” Lady Gaga got a slew of ripoff accusations for Born This Way‘s “Judas” (“Express Yourself”) and “Fashion of His Love” (“I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”) And even tracks that aren’t outright ripoffs can sound pretty similar, like twin Dr. Luke productions “TiK ToK” and “California Gurls” (and now Cascada’s Luke-less “San Francisco” too!)

Nevertheless, this Ke$ha example is a lot more blatant than anything above. It’s probably for the best that it’s a leak and not (yet) an official single or album track. But then again, this is Ke$ha, so there’s a fair chance that she was just screwing around with the track one day with the result of such screwery happening to infiltrate the Internet. And it could be worse. “Revelation” really isn’t that bad! If you’re going to swipe a track from one of the Housewives, you could do a lot worse. Like Norwegian contestants. (You knew we had to go there eventually.)