"C'Mon" Ke$ha

Despite scoring a #1 pop hit this fall with "Die Young"—a middling retread of previous artistic territory that has since grown on me—Ke$ha's latest album, Warrior, landed with a thud upon its release last week, outsold by Taylor Swift, One Direction and even Rod Stewart. Is this just a brief career misstep or a sign that her days on the charts are numbered? I have my theories (a pop star's contributions can only get so thin before there's nothing left for audiences to hold onto), but we'll get a better sense of Ke$ha's prospects with the performance of her next single, "C'Mon," which she debuted on last Thursday's X Factor results show. It's her live-fast-and-loose version of a love song, but with Auto-Tuned tales of mildly deviant behavior over the burble of a Dr. Luke synthscape, it's also nothing that audiences haven't heard from her before. That should make it the perfect litmus test for whether music's biggest party animal is officially all pooped out. B