The 2010s File Feature
Praying
History of "Praying" by Kesha Kesha released "Praying" on July 6, 2017, as the lead single from her third studio album Rainbow, marking her first new music i…
01 The Story
History of "Praying" by Kesha
Kesha released "Praying" on July 6, 2017, as the lead single from her third studio album Rainbow, marking her first new music in nearly five years. The song was written by Kesha Sebert, Ben Abraham, Andrew Joslyn, and Ryan Lewis, with production handled by Ryan Lewis, best known as one half of the duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Its release came after an extended and publicly documented legal dispute between Kesha and her former producer Lukasz Gottwald, known professionally as Dr. Luke, which had effectively kept her from releasing music under her record contract since 2014.
The recording of "Praying" took place during an emotionally complex period for the artist. Following the resolution allowing her to record new material, Kesha worked with collaborators who had not previously been part of her creative circle, a deliberate effort to establish a new sonic and emotional identity. The song was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, and Ben Abraham, an Australian singer-songwriter, was instrumental in helping shape the track's musical arc, contributing both to the lyrical framework and the vocal arrangement. Ryan Lewis's production blends piano-driven balladry with sweeping orchestral elements, building from a restrained, intimate opening into a full-scale climactic finish that showcases Kesha's vocal range in a way her earlier dance-pop recordings had not.
When "Praying" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 29, 2017, it entered at number 25, a strong opening that reflected significant streaming activity and radio airplay. The song spent 21 weeks on the chart in total, peaking at number 22 during the week of September 2, 2017. While not a chart-topper in the conventional sense, its sustained presence on the Hot 100 was considered commercially meaningful given the circumstances of Kesha's return to public-facing music production.
The single was accompanied by a music video directed by Jonas Akerlund, a Swedish director known for large-scale, visually ambitious video productions. The video features symbolic imagery referencing themes of spiritual renewal and personal liberation, and it accumulated over 150 million views on YouTube over the years following its release. The video's visual language drew critical attention for its deliberate restraint compared to the high-energy aesthetic of Kesha's earlier promotional materials.
Radio programmers at adult contemporary and pop stations embraced the track, and it received particular attention from music journalists who contextualized it within the broader narrative of Kesha's public legal battles. The song received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 60th Grammy Awards in January 2018, an accolade that underscored the industry's recognition of the recording as a significant artistic achievement regardless of its chart ceiling.
Rainbow, the album it led, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 upon its release in August 2017, giving Kesha her first chart-topping album. The success of "Praying" as a cultural and commercial document was widely credited as a catalyst for that album's reception. Music critics at publications including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and The Guardian identified the song as one of the defining pop releases of 2017.
The song also emerged at a moment of growing cultural conversation around workplace misconduct and survivor advocacy, and its release predated by several months the broader public discourse that intensified later in 2017. In this context, many observers described "Praying" as arriving at a historically significant cultural inflection point. Billboard later ranked the song among the most impactful singles of the decade in retrospective lists examining 2010s pop music. Its production, lyrical content, and the circumstances surrounding its creation have made it a recurring reference point in discussions of artistic resilience within the contemporary music industry.
The song's extended promotional campaign included a live performance at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, where Kesha performed alongside a choir, an arrangement that amplified the track's orchestral and communal dimensions for a national television audience of millions. That performance was widely regarded as one of the most emotionally impactful moments of that year's awards broadcast and was credited with generating a significant second wave of streaming interest in both the single and the Rainbow album. Industry analysts noted that the VMA performance demonstrated Kesha's capacity to translate the song's recorded emotional power into a live context, reinforcing the track's standing as one of the year's most significant artistic statements. The combination of the performance, the Grammy nomination, and the album's commercial success made the full arc of "Praying" from conception through promotional campaign one of the most discussed creative and commercial comebacks in the music industry during the entire decade.
02 Song Meaning
Meaning of "Praying" by Kesha
"Praying" is broadly understood as a song about surviving trauma, reclaiming personal strength, and arriving at a place of spiritual resolution after a period of profound suffering. Rather than centering on anger or recrimination, the song traces an emotional arc that moves from pain and vulnerability toward something closer to forgiveness and self-determination, though the tone remains complex throughout. It addresses an unnamed figure who had significant power over the narrator's life and whose actions caused lasting harm.
At its thematic core, the song engages with the idea of wishing one's antagonist the opportunity for growth and redemption, not out of naivety but out of a hard-won emotional maturity. The narrator expresses a desire for the person who wronged her to eventually find peace, to understand the weight of their own actions, and to face a higher moral reckoning. This position represents a significant departure from conventional revenge narratives in pop music. Rather than demanding punishment or expressing ongoing hostility, the song channels its emotional energy into something more ambiguous and, arguably, more powerful: genuine compassion delivered with full awareness of what was done.
The religious and spiritual imagery woven throughout the song is consistent with this thematic framework. References to prayer, divine will, and the afterlife place the narrator's experience within a larger metaphysical context, suggesting that ultimate justice or understanding lies beyond what can be settled between two people in the human realm. This is not presented as a passive resignation but as an active choice to release resentment and entrust resolution to a higher order of things.
Critics and cultural commentators have noted that the song operates on multiple levels simultaneously. On one level, it functions as a deeply personal statement about a specific lived experience. On another level, its themes are sufficiently universal that listeners who have experienced betrayal, power imbalance, or institutional failure have identified strongly with its emotional landscape. This double-register quality, personal specificity combined with broad emotional legibility, is widely cited as a reason the song resonated far beyond its immediate biographical context.
The musical construction reinforces the lyrical themes. The track begins in a hushed, restrained register before building steadily to a climax that is vocally and orchestrally overwhelming. This arc mirrors the emotional journey being described: the quiet endurance of suffering followed by a liberating release. Kesha's vocal performance is widely praised for its rawness and control, particularly in the climactic passages where she demonstrates a range and emotional depth that surprised many listeners who had primarily known her work in an energetic dance-pop context.
Culturally, "Praying" was received as an unusually candid artistic statement, one that many commentators placed within a broader tradition of survival narratives in American popular music. Its release in mid-2017, before major public conversations about power and accountability in entertainment industries became dominant, meant that it was initially received primarily as a personal document. As those conversations intensified later that year, the song gained additional layers of cultural meaning and was frequently referenced in media coverage of survivor narratives more broadly. Its sustained resonance across this period is a measure of both its lyrical intelligence and its emotional precision.
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