Recording artist Kesha attends the 2014 Billboard Music Awards. Photo / Getty
Recording artist Kesha attends the 2014 Billboard Music Awards. Photo / Getty
Singer Kesha has opened up about her past struggle with eating disorders during a frank new cover story with Rolling Stone magazine.
In early 2014, the star checked into a rehab facility for eating disorder treatment. She'd been battling with bulimia ever since signing her first record deal, struggling to fit into what she thought was the pop star mould.
Singer Ke$ha attends Z100's Jingle Ball 2009 at Madison Square Garden on December 11, 2009 in New York City. Photo / Getty
Kesha, 30, told Rolling Stone "certain people" around her would shame her for her food habits (in court papers, she accused her ex-musical collaborator Dr. Luke of calling her a "fat f**king refrigerator", a claim he denies).
"I really just thought I wasn't supposed to eat food," she said.
"And then if I ever did, I felt very ashamed, and I would make myself throw up because I'd think, 'Oh, my God, I can't believe I actually did that horrible thing. I'm so ashamed of myself because I don't deserve to eat food'."
Kesha said she was "slowly starving," a situation not helped by the fact that the sicker she got, the better people told her she looked.
Kesha attends Billboard Women In Music 2016 Airing December 12th On Lifetime at Pier 36 on December 9, 2016 in New York City. Photo / Getty
"They would just be like, 'Oh, my gosh, keep doing whatever you're doing! You look so beautiful, so stunning'."
The singer said her eating issues came to a head one night during a dinner party with friends and family when she struggled to hide the fact that she wasn't actually eating anything.
"And I was like, 'Oh, my God, what if they walk outside and see this food in a bush? Or they see it in the garbage can?'" she recalled.
"And I am so anxious that I feel like I'm going to explode from all the secrets. All the secret times I'm pretending to eat or other times I'm purging, and I'm trying to not let anybody know. And I'm just f**king sick of this s**t. And I remember just shaking because I was so fed up, so anxious, and I was just mad that I had let myself get to that point."
Kesha (center in white) cries as she learns she will not be released from her record label contract in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday, February 19, 2016. Photo / Getty
From there, Kesha travelled with her mother - country songwriter Pepe Sebert - to rehab, where she slowly relearned healthy eating behaviours. She told Rolling Stoneit did not come easy.
"[I was] being like, 'I can't eat it. It's going to make me fat, and if I'm fat, I can't be a singer because pop stars can't eat food - they can't be fat.'" Out of rehab - and with the trauma of a much-publicised court case against Dr Luke behind her - Kesha's once again immersed in her work.
She recently mounted a successful musical comeback recently with the chart-topping album Rainbow, her first in five years. She credited friends and family with helping her make it through - including Taylor Swift, who donated a quarter of a million dollars to help cover Kesha's mounting legal costs during her court battle.
Swift, she told Rolling Stone, is "a f**king sweetheart. Very, very sweet, very, very genuine, extremely generous, picks up the phone every time I call her. My mum doesn't even always pick up the phone!"
