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With her artistic demeanour, Kesha influences me by constantly experimenting with new sounds (specifically, her ability to blend electropop, rock, rap, and country), lyrics, and stage presence/persona. Kesha inspires me to continuously improve my vocal ability as she pushes past boundaries and does not limit herself to one distinct way of singing. Overall, Kesha is one of my biggest musical inspirations because of her ability to challenge and stay true to herself no matter what is thrown her way. Kesha’s resilience and artistic talent inspire me daily to be a better musician.

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Through Yungblud's use of combining the punk, hip hop, and rock genres, he creates a unique mixed sound that influences my delivery, helping me emphasise my lyrics, causing me to establish more of an attitude when I sing and play my guitar. Harrison addresses various social themes throughout the majority of his music, approaches gender issues head-on and very explosively by utilising the punk sound. Adopting this approach in my writing techniques, it makes me more of the value and weight of the words an artist can have. Further, growing up in Doncaster, England, Harrison harnesses the grit and spirit of being an Englishman into his songs. He transfers his energy, whether anger or frustration, into his music, thus creating a sound that cannot go unheard. Through this, Yungblud encourages me to be louder and more unforgiving in conveying my message and music.

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The Clash heavily influenced Yungblud’s sound of being loud and untameable. With Harrison's desire to be seen and heard, it can be identified that he applied the same rebellious energy and bold attitude to his stage presence/persona (Gilbert, 2023). Following a similar protest mantra, Yungblud was inspired by the Clash’s ability to discuss prohibited themes in their song writing. As a result, this encouraged Yungblud to craft songs with more direct and blunt lyrics (Gilbert, 2023). The Clash encouraged Harrison's messy and all-over-the-place artistic flair. Yungblud stated in a Teen Vogue Interview 2020, “I think that's the epitome of punk rock; it's not just playing loud instruments and wearing exploited t-shirts. It’s literally, it just takes one person to go, “Hang on, I’m f***ing angry, and I’ve got something to say.”

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Robert Smith maintained a gothic androgynous style that echoed in Yugblud's appearance as he adopted Smith’s similar black eyeliner and red lipstick look. Due to Yungblud’s environment, with the people around him struggling to deal with his ADHD (Smith, 2020), Harrison found himself drawn to music that “made him feel like he could express himself without falter, without conforming” (Starkey, 2022). As a result, Yungblud was inspired by The Cure, more specifically, Robert Smith’s (lead singer) ability to remain authentic and unforgiving in expressing oneself. Not only did The Cure inspire Yungblud in his presentation but also through their song writing. Through the influence of punk (McIntyre, 2023). The Cure brought other methods of conveying a tough message to light through catchy melodies rather than following the traditional slow, sad song template.

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Eminem’s philosophy of following your artistic flow regardless of whether it followed the rules was adopted by Yungblud. Ultimately fuelling Harrison’s fiery demeanour in crafting his music and messages. Yungblud discusses in an interview with Teen Vogue in, 2020 that what drew him to Eminem was his flow and his ability to “find these pockets that don't abide by a rule”. Like Eminem, Yungblud maintained a similar approach of not conforming to the traditional song writing methods. Yungblud was inspired by Eminem’s bold attitude of saying whatever he wanted with laced humour. Thus, a sense of fearlessness is generated throughout Yungblud's songs (Detroit Historical Society, 2024).

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As a woman in the music industry, when MTV first emerged, Madonna fully utilised her spotlight by wearing daring clothing causing people to stop, look and listen to what she had to say. This can be seen in her reveal of wearing a pale pink conical bra (Fraser, 2023) during her ‘Blonde Ambition Tour’. As a result, Madonna inspired Kesha’s unforgiving and bold mode of self expression which can be seen to have been translated into Kesha’s work, with her own “out there” appearance and rebellious manner.

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On the first night of Madonna's Blond Ambition tour, held in April 1990 in Chiba, Japan, few in the audience could have prepared themselves for the spectacle about to unfold. With its $2 million dollar stage set, explosive choreography by voguing legends from the New York City ballroom scene, and headline-grabbing aesthetic fusion of Catholic imagery and BDSM, the show solidified Madonna's position at the top of music's pantheon. In less than two hours, she was no longer just a pop star-she had graduated to become a fully-fledged pop culture icon.

For her most avid fans, though, it was less of a surprise: Madonna was merely following up on the string of controversies that accompanied her latest album, Like a Prayer, a year earlier. A $5 million sponsorship deal with Pepsi was swiftly pulled after she debuted the video for her lead single, "Like a Prayer," the plot of which implicitly drew a link between racial injustice and organized religion. Featuring Ku Klux Klan-style burning crosses and Madonna receiving the stigmata, it led to a direct call from the Vatican to boycott Pepsi and its subsidiaries. "Art should be controversial, and that's all there is to it," Madonna told the New York Times with nonchalance in the lead-up to the album's release. (This laid-back response may have been due to the fact that Pepsi, eager to extricate themselves from the kerfuffle, let Madonna keep the $5 million check.)

Yet outside of the pearl-clutching backlash that followed the tour's debut, the image that would come to define it was far more modest, arriving within the first few minutes of the show. Sporting an artfully slashed pinstripe suit, Madonna levitated to the stage on a hydraulic platform. She held a monocle hanging off her necklace up to her eye, before launching into "Express Yourself." Then, moments later, she and her backup dancers whipped off their jackets to reveal something a little more sexy.

The pink conical bra that Madonna wore underneath is so embedded within the canon of both pop music and fashion that it now requires little introduction. Designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, who Madonna personally requested to create the costumes for the tour (she even handwrote him a letter to express her admiration for his humorous take on fashion), the look was the product of many months of collaboration, with fittings taking place both in New York and Gaultier's ateliers in Paris.

"When Madonna first called me in 1989, it was two days before my ready-to-wear show, and I thought my assistant was joking," said Gaultier in a 2001 interview with the New York Times. "I was a big fan. She knew what she wanted-a pinstripe suit, the feminine corsetry. Madonna likes my clothes because they combine the masculine and the feminine." Indeed, it was this gender-bending spirit that made the tour's visuals so memorable; just take her male dancers, who threw flamboyant shapes while sporting Tom of Finland-esque leather lace-back tops paired with Bob Fosse bowler hats. (The less glamorous side of which was explored memorably in the 2016 documentary Strike a Pose, where these dancers, many of whom were living with HIV/AIDS, saw their hopes and aspirations either realized or heartbreakingly thwarted.)

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The Story Behind Madonna's Iconic Jean Paul Gaultier Cone Bra

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On the first night of Madonna's Blond Ambition tour, held in April 1990 in Chiba, Japan, few in the audience could have prepared themselves for the spectacle about to unfold. With its $2 million dollar stage set, explosive choreography by voguing legends from the New York City ballroom scene, and headline-grabbing aesthetic fusion of Catholic imagery and BDSM, the show solidified Madonna's position at the top of music's pantheon.

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Most of Kesha’s country inspiration is derived from her deep love of Dolly Parton (Weinflash, 2022). Her love of Parton see’s its origins due to the fact that Kesha’s mother co-wrote a song called Old Flames (Can't Hold a Candle to You), which was the No.1 hit from Dolly Parton’s album “Dolly, Dolly, Dolly” in 1980 (Tingle, 2017). Among many other musicians, such as Patsy Cline, Parton was known for "pioneering the interface between country and pop music styles" (Gorlinski, 2024). Thus, Kesha was influenced to experiment continuously with different styles of music. As a result, this led Kesha to craft a unique fusion of electronic dance beats with catchy pop and country melodies.

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Featuring in Kesha’s song “Resentment”, Brian Wilson is referred to as “one of her (my) personal musical heroes” (Dzurillay, 2023). Consequently, Kesha incorporated The Beach Boys' similar production methods of experimenting with “exotic instruments” to create a sound as distinct as Brian Wilson’s harmonic synthesis (Enos, 2023). Further, the Beach Boys influenced Kesha through their unmistakable use of vocal harmonies, applied with doubletracking, which was a technique pioneered by Brian, the main songwriter (Paese, 2022). Thus, this approach can be detected in several of Kesha’s songs, such as “C’mon,” “Chasing Thunder,” and “Bastards,” etc. Like the Beach Boys, Kesha crafted a signature sound that set her apart from other popular artists whilst simultaneously reflecting the popular culture of the early 2000s. Kesha mixed a heavy synthesised sound into her music, hoping to be dubbed, like The Beach Boys, as "the California sound' during that time (Paese, 2022).