Fans Choose Kesha’s ‘Gag Order’ as This Week’s Favorite New Music

Kesha’s Gag Order has topped this week’s new music poll.

Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (May 19) on Billboard, choosing the pop singer’s fifth album as their favorite new music release of the past week.

Gag Order brought in more than 68% of the vote, beating out new music from Post Malone (“Mourning”), Bad Bunny (“Where She Goes”), Lewis Capaldi (Broken By Desire to Be Heavenly Sent), Kaytraminé (Kaytraminé), and others.

Kesha’s 13-track collection is the singer’s long-awaited follow-up to 2020’s High Road. The Rick Rubin-produced set was preceded by dual lead singles “Fine Line” and “Eat the Acid,” both of which demonstrate a hard-fought evolution from her early days as pop’s reckless party girl in the early 2010s.

Prior to the album’s release, Kesha also dropped the frenetic “Only Love Can Save Us Now,” which hits the senses as equal parts country, rap and gospel confessional.

“I feel like I’m giving birth to the most intimate thing I’ve ever created,” the star confessed in an interview with Rolling Stone when she announced the album. “I really dug into some of my uglier emotions and sides of myself that are less fun. It’s scary being vulnerable. The fact that I have compiled an entire record of these emotions, of anger, of insecurity, of anxiety, of grief, of pain, of regret, all of that is so nerve-racking — but it’s also so healing.”

Trailing behind Gag Order on the poll is the “other” category, with 11% of the vote, Post Malone’s “Mourning” with 8% of the vote, and Bad Bunny’s “Where She Goes,” with nearly 7% of the vote.

See the final results of this week’s new music release poll below.

Mitchell Peters

Billboard