Portending a day when our pop stars may just abandon creative punctuation altogether, Ke$ha has dropped the distinctive dollar sign from her name to become just regular “Kesha”—humble, human, and indistinguishable from all the other Keshas out there. “Have you heard the new Kesha album?” you might ask a coworker. “You mean Kesha in human resources, or the Kesha in IT?” they’ll say.
But however confusing all these future interactions may be for you, for Kesha, abandoning the dollar sign embodies her newfound clarity, achieved after a recent stint in rehab for an eating disorder. The singer has reemerged for a fresh, healthy start as “Kesha Rose,” getting rid of both the “$” and her self-deprecating Twitter handle “@Ke$haSuxx”—as rehab teaches you to love yourself and not to focus on material things, or the symbols for them you might have inserted into your name. Anyway, the Ke$ha dollar may be on the decline, sending international markets into a flurry, but fortunately the Too $hort is still going strong.