Hi guys it's Nova here! Welcome to a very special fourth episode of... THAT'S MY OPINION! Okay so in
this episode I wanted to talk a little bit more about one topic in particular
so I'm just going to be talking about this topic and only this topic. I want to get
into some of the drama with Kim Petras and the fact that she seems to be
working an awful lot with a producer named Dr. Luke. Now I just want to rewind a
little bit and explain some of the significance about why this might be
controversial. So back in 2014 Kesha sued her producer
Dr. Luke for a whole string of reasons including emotional abuse sexual abuse
it was a whole load of stuff and she claimed that she could no longer work
with him because he had sexually abused her, emotionally abused her over several years
given her an eating disorder all of this all of this stuff and she was tied in with
a contract where she still had to record another album with him and this
court case went on for so fucking long but eventually in 2016 it was dropped
Kesha said that she was just so emotionally done with it all she wasn't
getting anywhere nobody seemed to believe her so she just went ahead and
recorded that album with him on his label and I think as far as I know now
she's free of him, she's fulfilled her contract and now she's done. Um a
lot of people claim that Kesha was lying about this a lot of people said that
Kesha wished to terminate her contract and made up this story so she could kind
of dissolve the contract early and make herself out to be such an amazing heroic
character in the process and demonize Dr. Luke. I never believed that. I think it
was always so sincere whenever Kesha spoke about this obviously we'll never
know the truth but I I never ever doubted her I will just say I find it
very suspicious that the judge in the case was married to somebody connected
to RCA Records I think it was RCA the label that Dr. Luke is signed with I think
that was a real conflict of interest there and I don't know if that was ever
addressed I thought that was really really shady
so that conflict of interest definitely played into my mind when I
was thinking about this as a whole and I absolutely believe that Kesha was
telling the truth. As a result of the years of controversy surrounding Dr.
Luke and his court case many many artists kind of blacklisted him and
refused to work with him he used to be such a famous prolific producer he
worked and produced for so many people and all of a sudden nobody wantedto
touch him and if they did the gays were really really hard calling them out on
social media and did not take lightly to these collaborations. Fast forward a few
years and we see the emergence of a brand new pop starlet Kim Petras. Kim
Petras is a young bubblegum pop star I think she's got a lot of potential
I think she's super super cool her music style is so bubblegum pop her aesthetic
is great she loves crystals, pink she loves Halloween, she's very very me, so on
paper I should stan. I have stanned. I had loved her. However it has been brought to
my attention that almost every single one of Kim Petras's songs, singles almost
all of her albums have been collaborations with Dr. Luke. Whilst it's
nice to try and support an up and coming trans artist I don't think it's fair to
do this at the cost of selectively forgetting the abuse
Kesha went through during her time working with Dr. Luke. Back in April 2018
this topic came up in an interview with Kim Petras and I think it was NME and
she had this to say "I would like my fans to know that I
wouldn't work with somebody I believed to be an abuser of women definitely not."
Straight away this statement more or less says that Kim is calling Kesha a
liar she is saying that she would never work with somebody who abused women and
yet she is standing by working with Dr. Luke therefore she is saying she does
not believe Dr. Luke abuses women therefore she is saying Kesha lied about
everything in her court case. Now this did kind of piss off a lot of people but
I feel like not as many people as it should have done however it would seem
that Kim did kind of catch wind of this because when she was added to Troye
Sivan's Bloom tour as a support act she responded to some of this backlash on
Instagram. She said "Most people have been really supportive and positive about my
joining the Troye Sivan tour. However some have not. I want to share with you
what's in my heart. While I've been open and honest about my positive experience
with Dr. Luke that does not negate or dismiss the experience of others or
suggest that multiple perspectives cannot exist at once.
I didn't communicate this clearly in the past after seeing some people's reaction
to the news of my support in the Bloom tour I've learned about the effects of
some of my past comments I want to say that I'm sorry to anyone that I upset."
She went on to say on Twitter that "I do want to express my sympathy for any and
all abuse victims." Now whilst on the surface this might
seem like a step in the right direction it is kind of bullshit she's basically
saying well maybe Dr. Luke's abused these other people but he's not abused me so I'm
gonna carry on working with him. I think there might be a bit more to this than
it would seem at first but I just want to touch on Troye Sivan's reaction to all
of this because he remained silent throughout most of this until it started
to bubble up a little bit more in the LGBT community and he was forced to
respond on I believe it was Instagram. He said this. "For transparency I was not
aware of some of the comments Kim has made in the past that was my mistake
I since have read them and was troubled by them like you. The opinions communicated in
these interviews don't align with my personal values or the values of the
tour I waited a few days to sit with these comments, talk to Kim, read what you guys
had to say and think about how I felt. My conversations with Kim and her
statement yesterday showed me where her heart is and that she was growing and
changing just like the rest of us her statement was genuine apologetic and
clarified her position in a way that eased me people mess up people misspeak
I've always said that it's how you grow and learn from your mistakes that truly
matters and I want to treat Kim the same way I'd like to be treated when my inevitable
big mess comes." It's almost as if Troy hadn't read the statement
whatsoever was just assuming that it was going to be something that would explain
everything and would be a suitable apology for her previous comments. That
is probably what his management had told him she was going to do and yet to me
and to many others she really didn't step up enough and her statement
regarding all of this was not good enough I think therefore Troy
trying to tell everybody "she apologized everything's fine" is kind of bullshit
because he's just supporting a bullshit statement with another one I was hoping
that after all of this Kim would take a step back and try and put this behind
her and start working with other producers so I was very surprised and
disappointed to see that with the release of her Halloween EP
"Turn Off The Light" the entire record is produced by Dr. Luke. It's like she
hasn't learned anything I can't see any way to excuse this now I think this
would have been a perfect opportunity to just draw a line in the sand, put her
collaborations with them behind her and move forward with new producers because
I love her vision, I love her aesthetic, I love her voice
I think this is a pop star I could really get behind but I cannot keep
excusing all of this nonsense with an accused sexual abuser with somebody who
has tried to destroy a woman's life and yet there seem to be so many people
within her fan base within the LGBT community who are either happy to ignore
this happy to look past the fact that she's working with somebody who sexually
abused another female artist and they're saying "no we have to support a trans artist
we have to stand behind this new up-and-coming trans artist" and whilst I
understand the will and the wanting to do such a thing I don't think you are
able to whilst all of the shit with Dr. Luke is still happening. I've seen
some people try and defend her actions by saying that Kim signed with Dr. Luke
prior to all of this with Kesha becoming public knowledge
and that her contract states that she has to work with him for X amount of
years X amount of records and that she is tied into this contract and no matter
what her feelings are about him she has to deliver on his contract and she
cannot cut ties with him until this contract until the agreements of the
contract are fulfilled. This is quite a likely assumption to make I feel like
this would explain a lot I feel like this would explain why she's having to be
quite vague about it because I'm sure there'd be a clause about not being able
to bad-mouth him this would explain why she keeps churning out song after song
with him however it is just an assumption and unfortunately it's not
something I think we're ever going to know for sure there are no receipts for
this I don't believe she would ever be able to talk about this as a topic and
whilst it may be the case, is it right for us to just assume so? Because what if
it's not the case? What if she is that ignorant and she's just continuing to
work with him because he's making her good music and he's busy building her up
as an artist and what if she doesn't care about Kesha's accusations? These are
two strong possibilities she might be trapped in this contract or just
completely ignorant and selfish. I would love to hear what you guys think about
this topic as a whole if you can find any kind of evidence that supports the
fact that she's tied into a contract at the moment and has to deliver on that and
therefore can't speak her mind about anything negative regarding to Dr.
Luke please let me know please point me in the right direction because I would feel
so much better about her as an artist I would have so much more respect for her
integrity as an artist if this was the case because she is young everybody
makes mistakes I can see the temptation to sign a contract with such a renowned
artist maybe she did do this before all of this came out I would love that to be
true however if this is not the case then I'm afraid this is not an artist we
should be supporting. We should not be supporting people who rise to success at
the cost of bringing other people down this is not cool please don't forget
about Kesha please don't forget about the struggles that Kesha went through we
have to support victims of abuse. Okay you guys this was my rant on Kim Petras,
Kesha and Dr. Luke I hope you found it interesting, I would love to hear your
thoughts about this like I said so please do comment down below.
I've seen some strong opinions either side on Twitter but I want to know what
our viewers think about it do you think that we should just ignore all of this
and support Kim Petras as an up-and-coming trans pop star or do you
think she should be held accountable for her ignorance / selfishness / naivete
towards the fact that her producer is a accused sexual abuser? I'm going to
be doing a more varied episode next time so also please let me know on Twitter or
in the comments if there's any other topics that you'd like to see covered
in a future episode but that is it for this week thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you guys very soon. Bye! Lots of love as well to our brand new Cult
Priest Roy Cunningham!