Ke$ha 'had own issue' with 'Die Young' lyrics

Ke$ha 'had own issue' with 'Die Young' lyrics

Photo by Debra L. Rothenberg

Ke$ ha reportedly said she was reluctant to sing the lyrics on her song ‘Die Young,’ which has had reduced airplay since the Newtown shootings.

Hot pop singer Ke$ ha seems to have no problem with top-40 radio pulling her hit song “Die Young” in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.

Multiple sources said Ke$ ha tweeted Tuesday that “I had my very own issue with ‘Die Young.’ … I did not want to sing those lyrics and was forced to.”

The tweet was deleted by Wednesday, but radio was still treading cautiously.

While the lyrics of the song are about living for the moment, the title remains problematic.

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Last Thursday, New York top-40 station WNOW (92.3 FM) played “Die Young” 17 times.

The station was on pace to give “Die Young” 17 more spins Friday, the day of the shootings. But after its 13th airing at 5:36 p.m., it disappeared.

As of late afternoon Wednesday, it had not been played since.

“We gave it a rest,” a CBS Radio spokeswoman said Wednesday. She did not indicate when it might return.

It was back Wednesday on New York’s No. 1 top-40 station, WHTZ (100.3 FM) â€" though it was being played fewer times than it was a week earlier.

The cutbacks have not been limited to the tristate area, though they have been more dramatic here.

Adam Foster from the ratings service Nielsen BDS said that from Dec. 8 to 10, “Die Young” scored 9,249 spins at the terrestrial radio stations Nielsen monitors around the country.

From Dec. 15 to 17, it scored 6,769 â€" a drop of about 30%.

“For a song that just went to No. 1 with considerable momentum, it was sharply down,” said Sean Ross of Edison Media Research.

“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People, a song that directly talks about shooting people at a school, lost even more airplay â€" though it was already falling out of most top-40 rotations.

Between Dec. 8 and 10, Nielsen’s Adam Foster says, it had 809 spins. Between the 15th and 17th, it had plummeted to 293.

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