{"id":182313,"date":"2025-12-13T08:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T08:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/182313\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T08:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T08:58:07","slug":"keshas-mother-pebe-sebert-releases-self-titled-lost-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/182313\/","title":{"rendered":"Kesha’s Mother Pebe Sebert Releases Self-Titled Lost Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Pebe Sebert<\/a> was raising her daughter, Kesha<\/a>, she passed along a guiding philosophy about turning bad days into good songs. \u201cThis is how you get to be a great writer,\u201d she\u2019d tell her. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t have a terrible day, you would have nothing to write about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSebert knew all about terrible days, rough weeks, and even harder months. Nothing weighed more heavily on her than the 40 years she spent knowing her debut album might never be heard. \u201cThere\u2019s very few things that I deeply regret in my life,\u201d Sebert tells Rolling Stone over Zoom from her Nashville home. \u201cThis was literally the one thing I couldn\u2019t get past.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAbout a decade before Kesha<\/a> was born in Los Angeles, Sebert worked as a songwriter around Nashville. She found success behind the scenes, but she\u2019d come to the Music City to be a singer. By 1984, she began to make real strides towards bringing that dream to life. She\u2019d met the producer Guy Roche, who worked in the basement of the publishing company Criterion Music. They crossed paths just as synthesizers began changing the course of pop music. The album they recorded was perceptive in its exploration of love, purpose, and youth. It was a snapshot of a breakthrough that never arrived as Sebert was knocked off course by addiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI really held it against myself that I had basically fucked my life up so badly that the one thing that felt like it meant the most to me at that point in time ended before it got a chance to see the light of day,\u201d Sebert says. It was a wound that time couldn\u2019t heal, especially when she returned to Nashville after escaping to L.A. for years. \u201cI always played the music for my kids,\u201d she adds. \u201cAnd there were just a few select people in my life who had heard the music who were like, \u2018Man, this stuff would have been great. It would have fit right in.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWho says it\u2019s too late? Today, after more than four decades, the singer-songwriter and music mom has released her lost album, Pebe Sebert<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the time that has passed, the 11-track record sounds oddly contemporary. Over the past few years, Eighties trends have surged back into pop by way of the Weeknd\u2019s \u201cBlinding Lights\u201d and Kate Bush\u2019s 1985 single \u201cRunning Up That Hill,\u201d which found a new generation of fans in 2022 thanks to Stranger Things. \u201cA lot of people brought this music up when Kate Bush had her resurgence because this stuff is so similar,\u201d Sebert says, though she admittedly hasn\u2019t spent much time with Bush\u2019s work. \u201cI heard of her and was compared to her at some points around the time that we were making the music \u2026 It\u2019s funny how the creative minds ended up doing a lot of the same things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSebert saw the same mirror between herself and Kesha, especially once her daughter started processing her worst days through music. \u201cIt turned everything around and made all the hard stuff feel so useful,\u201d Sebert says. Over a decade ago, Kesha recorded her mom\u2019s song \u201cVampire,\u201d the original version of which was released in 2021<\/a> and became the lead single to Pebe Sebert<\/a>. The singer also took interest in recording \u201cCities Burning\u201d and \u201c1945,\u201d but never got around to it. Still, Sebert saw traces of her recording sessions with Roche when writing \u201cEat the Acid\u201d with Kesha for Gag Order.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMe and Guy had so much fun experimenting, I\u2019ve got a pretty wild imagination, so my imagination just went off the charts,\u201d Sebert says, looking back on their collaborations. \u201cI was so inspired by the sounds we were able to make and that just inspired the music, which turned out to be pretty strange and cinematic.\u201d They captured an uneasy sense of mystery on the suspenseful \u201cPremonition,\u201d and gave a gift to the dancefloor on \u201cThe Ice,\u201d a pulsating record about passion not being enough to warm up a heart that has grown too familiar with loneliness and cynicism. She interrogates this more deeply on \u201cWhy?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I first started being in love, I thought it was all magical. I thought it was all going to fix me \u2014 you know, the big thing is the right guy was going to fix me for sure and take care of all my problems,\u201d Sebert says. \u201cBoy, was I barking up the wrong tree. I had so much to learn.\u201d She comes around to this lesson on \u201cNice Girl,\u201d singing, \u201cIf you want a girl, who really needs you\/A fragile toy to keep up on a shelf\/Don\u2019t waste your time, I will not deceive you\/I can do just fine all by myself.\u201d There\u2019s some bite to her tone, but her voice is slightly restrained. The original recording tapes endured some weathering over the years they were lost. \u201cIt\u2019s not digital, so it\u2019s a real thing that actually disintegrates,\u201d Sebert says.<\/p>\n

\n\tSebert compared it to the restoration process old paintings undergo at museums. Still, she is grateful to have any record of her old voice. Around five or six years ago, she lost it for good. \u201cI don\u2019t know what happened, but it\u2019s something to do with my age and probably menopause,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I just opened my mouth to sing one day and a big chunk of my voice was gone, so there was not the option to re-record anything.\u201d Pebe Sebert has been complete for a year, so she couldn\u2019t capitalize on recent technological developments in AI, either. Having this album, Sebert adds, \u201cmade the loss not feel as tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019ll miss singing background melodies and harmonies while writing songs, but she\u2019s come to terms with the trade off. She also accepted that she was never really meant for the rock star life. \u201cI truly believe in my heart, if I had gotten famous, I would have died,\u201d Sebert says. \u201cI was enough of a mess not having the money to do drugs the way I wanted to, that if I\u2019d had unending amounts of money, I\u2019m pretty sure I would not have survived.\u201d She prefers the reality of experiencing that life in a healthier and safer way through her daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYears after returning to Nashville, Sebert reconnected with Guy while shopping around for producers to work with Kesha, who was about 15 at the time. \u201cHe said, \u2018Oh, she sounds like an Avril wannabe,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018OK, next.\u2019 We just moved on.\u201d Sebert was hyper-aware of how much had changed since they made her album together, particularly how his star continued to rise after she left. One of his most successful collaborators, Diane Warren<\/a>, found her way to him after hearing the music he made with Sebert at music executive Don Grierson\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI basically didn\u2019t connect with him for probably 10 years fully because I was so ashamed of myself and what a mess I\u2019d made of my life,\u201d Sebert says. \u201cIt took me a long time to recover, get sober, and try to rebuild my life. I was so intimidated by him that I just didn\u2019t even feel like I could talk to him.\u201d Sebert rebuilt her reputation and supported her children by writing country songs for other artists, all while her own album sat on the shelf collecting dust. When they reconnected again to restore and release the record, she finally felt like they were equals again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just a look inside the brain of a crazy girl in the Eighties who is living her best life, or at least it seemed like it at the time,\u201d Sebert says, reflecting on the record. Everything fell into place, even the label on which the album has been released. Pebe Sebert arrives via Kesha Records<\/a>, an independent record label launched through Warner Music Group\u2019s independent distribution arm ADA. \u201cIf I could have written out what would be the perfect thing to happen, that would have for sure been it,\u201d Sebert says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t get any better than the fact that she\u2019s weathered all her storms and come out and has her own record company. And then she, without me asking her, said she wanted my record to be her first release, which was so lovely and beautiful. It\u2019s all perfect the way it is. I\u2019m so proud of her.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tPebe Sebert shares parallels with another lost album released this year thanks to a musical family pipeline. In February, Hayley Williams\u2019 grandfather unearthed his own shelved album from the Seventies, Grand Man. <\/a>The record was released on her Paramore bandmate Zac Farro\u2019s Congrats Records. \u201cI just want to know someone liked what I did,\u201d Rusty Williams said in a statement earlier this year. \u201cI want people to see how it felt when things were real.\u201d Sebert resonated with this deeply. \u201cThis was a time in my life when things were very real, like I was in the throes of all the emotions for the good or for the bad of it,\u201d she says. \u201cThe best art is made by the craziest of people at the craziest points in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPebe Sebert marks the crossing of a finish line for Sebert, and she doesn\u2019t plan on moving the goal post any further. \u201cI\u2019m not going to be making any more records,\u201d she says. Now, her focus is on the Magic Mission, a nonprofit organization providing aid to cats and dogs in Central America. \u201cThere\u2019s not another big thing other than continuing to do the work with the animals, that means everything to me now,\u201d Sebert says. \u201cI feel like this is a nice bow on my music career \u2014 not to say that I\u2019m not going to continue to write, and not to say there couldn\u2019t be a horrible family band at some point in the future with me trying to sing in my low, broken voice. But I\u2019m pretty good with this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Pebe Sebert was raising her daughter, Kesha, she passed along a guiding philosophy about turning bad days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,10123,409,106037],"class_list":{"0":"post-182313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-kesha","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-pebe-sebert"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}