Click here to see The Dartmouth's photo essay from the Ke$ha concert.
All 4,000 tickets available were sold out, according to Programming Board marketing chair Rebecca Harrington. The pop singer's concert was eagerly anticipated by the Dartmouth community, bringing in both undergraduates and a surprisingly large number of local high school students, who said they looked forward to the chance to hear the top singles "TiK ToK" and "Your Love is My Drug" in the usually isolated Upper Valley.
"She's so amazing," said Valentina Sedlechek, a freshman at Hanover High School. "She's like a pop icon."
Ticket holders began waiting in line at 4:00 p.m., four hours before the doors opened and over five hours before Ke$ha took the stage.
"I love Ke$ha," Janna Wandzilak '14 said. "She just sings about what everyone else is afraid to sing about, like partying and dancing with no pants on."
The Cataracs the Los Angeles-based electro-pop duo of David "Campa" Singer-Vine and Niles "Cyrano" Hollowell-Dhar opened the concert along with singer Dev, incorporating their own beats into radio hits such as Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" and Taio Cruz's "Dynamite." The acts pumped up the crowd's energy by performing hits rather than original work, and ended with their most well-known collaboration song, "Like a G6."
The crowd was strangely eager to push forward during the opening act, with one aggressive shove resulting in approxiamately 20 students near the barricades falling to the ground. The duo's several efforts to urge the crowd to calm down fell on deaf ears.
The Cataracs and Dev's vocals were overtaken by the background track for much of their performance, leaving it to the audience to sing along with the lyrics. Sighs of relief were heard when they announced their last song as the crowd waited impatiently for Ke$ha to take the stage.
They were left, however, to stand for nearly 30 minutes under fluorescent lights as the set was changed for the main act. The extended wait disrupted the fervor of the crowd, many of whom seized the break to fall further back away from the stage.
Ke$ha's entrance brought immediate energy back to the crowd, as she opened with Flo Rida's "Right Round" the single that gave her her first break and transitioned quickly into her hit song "Blah Blah Blah." From her silver sequined top to her familiar drawl, Ke$ha gave the flash of grunge-glamour that was just what the crowd was expecting.
After serenading "some guy I stalked" in her song "Stephen," Ke$ha moved on to the title track from her album "Animal." Unlike The Cataracs and Dev, Ke$ha's voice came out distinctly over the bass and drum lines, making it seem like a truly live performance. The spaciousness of Leverone, which gave more than enough room for the stage and the audience, allowed the music to reverberate throughout the gym without falling too heavily on the ears a significant improvement from Programming Board's concert last year featuring Jason DeRulo that was held in Spaulding Auditorium. The audience this year was physically allowed to pack close to the stage, even if it meant a few rough shoves.
Ke$ha's show was consistently visually pleasing. Backup singers were dressed up in furry costumes as Ke$ha herself donned a cap, sometimes appearing in green, tree-like garb and, for the song "Dinosaur," wearing rubber dinosaur heads as they jammed. Two television screens set up on either side of the stage displayed psychedelic patterns throughout the performance, while glitter confetti was frequently pumped into the crowd, causing many an eager hand to attempt to catch a piece to save as a souvenir.
The excitement of the crowd only grew as the concert progressed, and audience members all around eagerly awaited Ke$ha's biggest hits. By the time "Your Love is My Drug" came on, the prevalent heat and sweat could no longer be discerned by the senses. Ke$ha's final, dynamic performance of her number-one single "TiK ToK" left the crowd chanting for one more song.
They were not disappointed, as the singer returned to perform her latest single, "We R Who We R," followed by a cover of The Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right to Party," before finally exiting the stage in smoke.
The crowd remained in their place, savoring the performance and the power-packed evening.
