Take It Off

This is a track from LA-born, Nashville-raised singer-songwriter Kesha's debut album, Animal. Known at the time as "Ke$ha," she had already had some success as a songwriter (Miley Cyrus' "The Time Of Our Lives") and as a featured vocalist (Flo Rida's "Right Round") before the release of the album and its lead single, "TiK ToK."

Kesha told Esquire magazine that she wrote this song, "About when I went to a drag show, and how really turned on I was by these transvestite men taking clothes off. I was like, What does that even make me?" She explained why she is fascinated by cross-dressers. "It's like my new pick. I'm really fascinated by them. Because I feel like my music stands for the ultimate statement of irreverence. 'We don't give a f--k/we don't give a f--k' is one of the lines in the song, and it's true: Me and my friends, no matter how beautiful or not, it's just whatever. So I see these transvestites who are in my video, and I went to one of the drag shows, and I was like, That's taking it to a whole new level."

The song's music video was directed by Paul Hunter and Dori Oskowitz. It features Kesha and some male and female pals dancing around in a mosh pit while slowly turning into star dust as they "Take It Off". The singer explained to Phoenix New Times: "[It's] about me and all my hot vampire babe friends breaking into a hotel on another planet, and at the end we all turn into this beautiful stardust. Once you take it all off, all your inhibitions, your clothes, we're all made up of the same thing."