The Ke$ha Project: "31 Seconds Alone"

By now we know that Ke$ha has a definite sexiness about her. It has been flourishing throughout her transition from the garbage chic look of her public image accompanying her major debut in late 2009 with Animal to the sleek electro-glam punk of the late 2010 followup EP Cannibal and her just-wrapped "Get $leazy" tour, nowhere better exemplified than in her stellar music video for the single "Blow." Loyal readers of this blog as well as any member of the small but mighty group of enlightened folk I like to call the Ke$ha Congregation also know that Ke$ha is a genius, one who could projectile vomit onto a Paris Hilton track and thereby render it a venerable piece of art (much like she once did to said heiress' wardrobe). It has been a while since the last look inside Vertigo Shtick's vast (and, I hope, comprehensive) vault of unreleased gold for The Ke$ha Project, our ongoing campaign to proclaim and prove Ke$ha's brilliance to the skeptical masses. Fortunately, our friends at Idolator recently uncovered a new artifact, an unreleased demo called "31 Seconds Alone," and it has knocked me head-over-ripped stockings (I don't exaggerate: my every last hair stood literally on end), and thus The Ke$ha Project revs back into action.

In my pop music, two things I enjoy more than mediocre sex, although the two rarely converge, are Ke$ha and close female harmonies (this is likely the reason "Stephen" became the tipping point that won me over on Ke$ha and Animal), and "31 Seconds Alone" teems with both. It's a wistful, sultry, mid-tempo dirge, somehow both sensual and sad all at once; it sounds like a cousin to Zero 7's "In the Waiting Line" or perhaps the Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground" though not nearly as melancholy. The meticulously rhymed and evocative lyrics tell of a close encounter with an especially magnetic stranger on an overpopulated dance floor, and that thrilling but disappointing moment when the instinct suggests the possibility of something magnificent, if only you weren't the D.D. and your friend hadn't just vomited on a bouncer and you could have caught a name over the blare from the speakers before the enticing stranger disappeared into the night.

And if you haven't been lucky enough to have had such an experience, well, Ke$ha pretty expertly sums it up in every way. Friends and Ke$ha Congregants, I give you "31 Seconds Alone," and hope you enjoy it with half the intensity as I did. Unless you're driving or operating heavy machinery.

Read More on The Ke$ha Project:

• "(Fuck Him) He's A DJ"
• "Red Lipstick"
• "Dirty Picture" (with Taio Cruz)