httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWWKavfQKAM
The support for Kesha has created a PR nightmare for Sony, which maintains that it cannot interfere with Kesha and Luke’s contract.
In a sworn statement in December 2015, Luke responded to the charges from Kesha’s 2014 lawsuit: “All of their horrific allegations of abuse, threats and purported misconduct by me against Kesha are completely untrue and deeply hurtful,” he said.
According to a statement given to Billboard by Luke’s attorney Christine Lepera, “Kesha’s court filings are and have always been a transparent business ploy to pressure Luke into a more favorable and lucrative contract. Neither Kesha nor her mother have ever sworn under oath that any of the assault allegations have occurred, despite having numerous opportunities to do so. In fact, they swore the opposite in 2011.”.
Less than two months later, according to Pebe, Luke and Max Martin met Kesha and Pebe for lunch at a restaurant in Beverly Hills to discuss who should become Kesha’s manager.
After the failed deal with Warner Bros., Pebe says, “Kesha would tell me she was going to take her car to Mulholland and drive off the cliff. She was a little dramatic, but I never knew for sure.” One day Pebe says that Kesha reached her on the phone and said, “Dr. Luke just called me and I have 24 hours to fire my lawyer and my managers and go back with him. Anytime I get a contract, he’s going to come forward and basically say he owns me. What do I do?”.
Kesha’s 2014 lawsuit states that Luke once “Physically backed Kesha into a corner, w she was curled up in a ball, crying and fearing for her life.” Pebe says that Luke did this, shaking his fist and screaming at her, after Kesha refused to sing the “Fat bitches” lyric.
Kesha Posts ‘Grateful’ Statement: ‘This Issue Is Bigger Than Just About Me’. One night in 2012, Pebe remembers that Dr. Luke had Kesha and Pebe come to his studio and proceeded to scream at them for three hours.
Kesha, says Pebe, had undergone a lot of therapy since going into rehab and knew “She couldn’t go on as a healthy person” without breaking free from Luke – that she was no longer “Willing to be a victim.” Just one week later, Dr. Luke succeeded in having her testimony in a 2010 civil case – in which her former manager, Sonenberg, and his company, DAS, sued Kesha for $14 million in commissions – unsealed.
Kesha’s 2014 lawsuit states that Dr. Luke “Repeatedly threatened that if she ever told anyone about these abusive incidents, he would destroy both [Kesha] and her entire family.” Once, the documents say, he took Kesha “Down to the beach to ‘have a talk’ with her,” and “Threatened to shut her career down, take away all her publishing and recording rights… He threatened to harm Ms. Sebert and the entire family’s careers, as well as their physical safety.” Kesha “Was genuinely scared,” says Pebe, and would sometimes hire security to sit in the driveway of her Nashville house.