Last month, Kesha previewed some new music on Instagram Live, indicating that a new era might be upon us. Today, that rumor turns out to be true: Kesha has announced a new album, Gag Order, which follows 2020’s High Road and is set to drop May 19. It’s produced by Rick Rubin and executive produced by Kesha. Come Friday, Kesha will share two album singles, “Eat The Acid” and “Fine Line.”

In a new Rolling Stone feature, Kesha says “Eat The Acid” is actually about not doing acid, per her mother’s advice: “Do whatever you want in your life, but don’t eat acid, because when you eat acid, you see things that you’ll never be able to unsee.” Meanwhile “Fine Line” is an angry tune about “all the doctors and lawyers [who] cut the tongue out of my mouth… But hey, look at all the money we made off me.” In the article, Kesha says the album focuses on her “uglier emotions”:

I wrote “TiK ToK,” and “the party don’t start ’til I walk in,” so I almost felt like I was becoming a caricature of this toxic positivity. We live in a culture where I feel like we always show our best side. But Rick Rubin created the most beautiful, safe space for me to really dive into these emotions.

The album news comes amid new developments in Kesha’s nine-year legal battle against her former producer Dr. Luke. Last week, the singer’s lawyers went to the New York Court Of Appeals, where they are attempting to overturn a prior ruling that determined Dr. Luke was a private figure rather than a public one, which would not obligate the producer to pay the singer’s legal fees or be subject to a retroactive application of the 2020 amendments to the anti-strategic lawsuit against public participation (anti-SLAPP) law. (In 2014, Kesha sued Dr. Luke, alleging he knocked her out with an unknown substance and raped her during a period of alleged sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Luke then sued Kesha for defamation — that case will go to trial on July 26 after being postponed from February.)

“Without the darkness there is no light. So I let my darkness have the light. I can’t fight the truth. Life is difficult and painful. It is for everyone,” wrote Kesha in an album manifesto. “An artist doesn’t exist to make others happy. I believe an artist gives voice, motion, color to the emotions we all have. The good emotions, and the unmanageably fucking miserable ones.”

@freedomforkesha Eat The Acid – Kesha’s new song! #kesha #k5 #newera #newmusic ♬ original sound – Free Kesha

Gag Order will be out 5/19 via Kemosabe/RCA Records. Pre-order it here.