Kesha Admits Something Heartbreaking About Dr. Luke Lawsuit

Kesha was recently the subject of a lengthy magazine profile that emphasized her career stasis. And now her legal battles continue, with both her and Dr. Luke, real name Lukasz Gottwald, filing counterclaims in court Monday in New York's Supreme Court. The petition is a retry for Kesha, after Justice Shirley Kornreich denied her an injunction and tossed her hate crime counterclaim out of court. Kesha's new counterclaim, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, likens their situation to a divorce from an abusive spouse. "To be clear, Kesha does not seek the renegotiation of contractual terms," the counterclaim reads. "She is not demanding more money. Kesha asks for something far more basic: the freedom to make music without being bound indefinitely to the very producer who subjected her to years of abuse and continues that abuse to this day. Dr. Luke seeks tens of millions of dollars in punitive damages from Kesha and her mother. If successful, Kesha and her mother would be penniless." Gottwald has filed a proposed amended complaint that continues his claim that Kesha is trying to smear him publicly. "On February 26, 2016 — one week after losing her motion for preliminary injunction — Kesha initiated a text message conversation with Stefani Germanotta, the recording artist who is professionally known as 'Lady Gaga,'" his lawyers write, according to THR. "During this text message conversation, Kesha falsely and baselessly asserted that Kesha and another female recording artist (the 'Other Recording Artist') had both been raped by Gottwald. Specifically, Kesha told Lady Gaga that 'she [i.e., the Other Recording Artist] was raped by the same man' as Kesha. The 'man' to whom Kesha referred was Gottwald — as the surrounding context of the text message makes clear. Kesha’s assertions to Lady Gaga were completely false. Gottwald did not rape Kesha, and he did not rape the Other Recording Artist." Essentially, we've reached the stage where Dr. Luke has a lot more money and seems really pissed off. Maybe rightly, maybe wrongly, there's no reliable way of telling. But Kesha continues to be unable to release music she says she's recorded and filed, while Dr. Luke continues to file counterclaim after counterclaim, determined not to lose even an inch. Some might speculate that he's holding her in purgatory out of spite, for what he sees as a trial in the court of public opinion. One suspects that the only people that stand to profit from this ongoing fiasco are the lawyers. Read more about the battle, and why Kesha's situation could be about to get a lot worse, here.