This is an apology many didn’t see coming
Kesha’s mother has addressed the line in her daughter’s 2010 hit single “Cannibal” which name-drops the infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
But it might not be the statement you expected ..
Revealing that she wrote the lyric in question, the 35-year-old singer’s mother, who has co-writing credits on the song, Pebe Sebert took to TikTok to address angry fans.
The lyric goes: “Use your finger to stir my tea/ And for dessert I’ll suck your teeth/ Be too sweet and you’ll be a goner/ Yeah, I’ll pull a Jeffrey Dahmer.”
@pebesebert Some context on the lyric that’s bothering people 12 years later. All opinions are valid. Not meant to shut anyone down, just more info #jeffreydahmer #kesha #cannibal #dahmer ♬ Cannibal – Ke$ha
Sebert said: “The whole Jeffrey Dahmer lyric in ‘Cannibal’ is a big controversy right now, and I thought I’d just say a few things about it because that was my line that I wrote in ‘Cannibal’.
“At the time, Kesha and the other writer were too young to even know who Jeffrey Dahmer was,” she said in a the video on Sunday (2 October).
Sebert went into detail about the creative process in which she used the name of the serial killer, who made national headlines for acts of cannibalism and necrophilia.
“Literally, the way it happened is I have this rhyming program called Master Writer for Songwriters,” she said. “We were looking for a rhyme for ‘goner,’ at the very end of the widest rhymes was Jeffrey Dahmer. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s a perfect lyric’.”
Sebert said that the lyric was not written with the intent ‘to be insensitive to anybody whose families were involved in this and lost loved ones.’
The songwriter apologized to ‘anyone who’s lost a family member in this tragedy,’ and that they ‘certainly never meant to hurt anybody or make anybody feel bad.’
She said that ‘at the time, it was a song that we were writing about Kesha. It was a tongue-in-cheek funny song. It was not actually about cannibalism. It was just a title.’
Sebert said that the controversy comes as the mini-series is “kind of bringing attention back,” as the song has “been out for more than 10 years, probably almost 12 years” and “is not something that we’ve recently written.”
She added: “Jeffrey Dahmer was just part of the culture back then … everybody talked about him for many years. What he’d done was so extreme, and so worse than anyone had ever done that anybody knew about.”
Netflix’s new series on the serial killer hasn’t left the headlines since airing less than a fortnight ago and it has some people concerned that the serial killer is going to become a favourite costume this Halloween.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which stars Evan Peters as Dahmer, has taken the number one spot on the streaming service following its release on September 21.
Dahmer was convicted of murdering 15 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 and sentenced to serve 15 consecutive life sentences in February 1992. He murdered at least 17 men, most young, gay African Americans, after luring them back to his home with the promise of paying them to pose nude for photographs. He then drugged and strangled them and generally mutilated and occasionally cannibalised their bodies.
Dahmer was arrested in July 22, 1991 and entered a plea of guilty but insane in 15 of the 17 murders he confessed to. Two years after being jailed, Dahmer, then aged 34, was killed by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.
Fans of the show are being urged not to out of respect for Dahmer’s victims. In recent days, Whoopi Goldberg hit out at Netflix for the timing of the series, saying “If that were my family, I’d be enraged”.
Thanks to the success of the release of Murphy’s series, Netflix is set to drop another series about Dahmer, Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, on 7 October.
Meanwhile one Reddit thread highlights just how many rap songs he is mentioned in, and says that he is sometimes referred to as ‘rap’s favourite serial killer.’
Related links:
- Whoopi Goldberg unleashes on the new Jeffrey Dahmer Netflix series
- People are calling Evan Peters one of the most ‘talented actors of our generation’
- The man who killed Jeffrey Dahmer on why he had to end the serial killer’s life
- Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ slammed for ‘disrespectful’ Jeffrey Dahmer lyric
- Dahmer viewers say ‘heart-wrenching’ Tony Hughes ‘Silenced’ episode should get awards
