Songfacts®:

• This song finds Kesha looking back from her days as a "sh--ty waitress" to her position now as an internationally famous pop star. The song was co-written by the singer's mother, Tennessee songwriter Pebe Sebert, who observed first hand her daughter's rise to the top.
• In her book My Crazy Beautiful Life, Kesha wrote of the song: "I rewrote the words a thousand times until I found something simple that felt right... When I sing, 'Like we're gonna die young,' I'm promising that no matter how old I get I'm never going to lose my youthful spirit."
• The song came under fire when the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, turned listeners off to songs celebrating premature death. While Kesha previously claimed ownership to the lyrics, she changed her tune when haters flooded her Twitter account in the shooting's aftermath. She tweeted: "I did NOT want to sing those lyrics and I was FORCED to."
  
  Kesha's fans blamed the singer's producer, Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald, and even started a petition to "Free Kesha" from the producer and his team, who were controlling her "like a puppet." Kesha would break ties with Dr. Luke in 2014, after charging him with sexual assault.