Alternative Lyrics: "C'Mon" 🏹💜

Hello Pop City!

Bonnie McKee back again, and today, we’re diving into the treasure trove of handwritten lyrics, abandoned ideas, and the building blocks of some of my biggest co-writes.

Let’s look at Kesha’s “C’Mon”!

I co-wrote two songs with her on the Warrior album, and flipping through these old pages takes me back to my post Indie Sleaze party days!

Flashback: The origins of Kesha 💫

Before we ever wrote together, I met Kesha when she was 17 years old. And even back then, she was already a force of nature.

I actually went to her first show ever in LA, at the now shuttered but formerly iconic Silver Lake venue Spaceland. She was so nervous, and she asked her pack of wild east sider friends and me to dress up and bring props to make it hype. So we did—lightsabers, bubble guns, capes, chaos. When she called us up on stage with her we happily obliged, but since her friends were the only people in the audience (nobody knew who she was yet!) we emptied the dance floor and were basically just raging on stage with her to an empty room, just wiling in the name of fun, a pack of misfits putting on a show for no one in solidarity. It was a beautiful mess. I believed in her so much, I was just a fan at that point.

I had no idea that a few years later, we’d be writing songs together.

This picture was taken at the Anthem magazine Coachella party circa 2008/2009? I remember it as one of the best Coachella parties ever- all the beautiful twenty something indie sleaze creatives and groupies alike getting sloppy in the sun in their finest mish mosh of hipster accessories and not much else. I think this was the year I drove to Coachella by myself with no tickets, no place to stay, and no plan whatsoever, and ended up crashing in a random McMansion with Kesha. I have vague memories of us luxuriating in a big bathtub washing the desert grime off together. I slept on a pool float under an office desk. It’s all a blur to be honest but I know I had a good time.

Writing C’Mon 💫

Fast forward a few years, and Kesha and I finally ended up in the studio together. She had already been working with Max Martin and Dr. Luke, and by the time I joined the session, the melody for the C’Mon chorus was written already written. I came in for Lyrical reinforcements.

Let me tell you, Kesha is an incredible songwriter. Her voice, her perspective, her ability to tell a story in a unique, culturally relevant, humorous way—she’s brilliant at combining rather brutally honest self deprecating lyrics, clever pop culture references and cut throat digs, while still maintaining a lot of heart.

Kesha took a LOT of heat early on for being a bratty white girl rapper. I mean people were so brutal, it was crazy. It took a lot of balls to step into a genre that traditionally was considered embarrassing for a white girl to attempt. But in typical Kesha fashion, there were zero fucks given. She was truly a pioneer in pop music, and kicked down the door for the Iggy Azalea’s and Qveen Herbies of the world. She was like if you took the raucous spirit of the Beastie Boys and the wild child attitude of The Runaways and made a perfect Swedish Pop baby, and it took a minute for the critics to catch up. But the pop fans rejoiced.

So, let’s talk about the early versions of C’Mon. Because, as always, there were a lot of drafts before we locked in the final lyrics.

We started with the chorus (which is usually where we start for songs like this—the hook has to be STRONG).

I love the word “satisfied.” It sings so well. One early line was: “We’re both going home satisfied.”

And then, there’s my word map—aka, my chaotic brainstorm session where I write down a ton of splashy words and see what sticks. Some gems from this session:

🔥 9 lives

🔥 Give me the mic

🔥 Appetite

🔥 Read my mind

🔥 Crime

🔥 Hitch a ride

I basically throw all these words into the mix, put stars next to my faves, and then see what actually works in the melody.

It’s like a puzzle—but a really sparkly, dramatic, pop anthem kind of puzzle. We wanted to stay on the “I” rhyme cuz it’s fun to sing the dipthong on “I-ee-I-I”. For those of you that don’t know what a diphthong is, they’re very important when you’re working out the phonetics of a lyric and how it fits in a melody. Here’s the definition:

diphthong ˈdɪfθɒŋ noun

a sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves towards another (as in coin, loud, and side). Often contrasted with monophthong, triphthong.

When you’re writing a song you can choose to lean into a dipthong or not, depending on how many syllables you want for the melody. For instance you could sing “loud” as one syllable or break it up into two as “La-ood”. Anyway there’s your vocab word for the

da-ey!

Fun fact: I frequently write down “Bonnie & Clyde” when brainstorming lyrics. It’s such a classic theme—ride or die, us against the world, chaos, danger, etc.— it works, but I’ve also heard it 5 million times so it rarely makes the cut.

Honestly, C’Mon is so underrated. People know it, but they don’t know they know it. You know what I mean? It’s one of those sneaky hits that just lives in the background of your brain. I always felt like the song would’ve done better if it had a different title. Like the rest of the lyric is so colorful and splashy, I would’ve loved to have just picked any other random lyric from a verse and used that, I love a title that isn’t the most obvious. But the title was already decided when they brought me in and I was merely a topliner not calling the shots, so C’mon was the final verdict.

(PS- Love all her new songs- Joyride is a bop!)

So, Kesha—if you see this, keep shining, keep being a queen, and keep making magic. Light sabers and bubble guns forever.

XO,
Bonnie 💖✨

Check out my original handwritten lyrics to Kesha’s “C’Mon” below: