Kesha’s mum Pebe Sebert has revealed she wrote the controversial lyric about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in her daughter’s song ‘Cannibal’.
The 2010 track has been thrust back into the spotlight following the release of Netflix’s new drama ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’ starring Evan Peters with many suggesting it was insensitive to the victims to name-check the multiple murderer in the song as the pop star sang: “Be too sweet and you’ll be a goner. Yeah, I’ll pull a Jeffrey Dahmer.”
Pebe has now spoken out to insist the song is about Kesha herself – not Dahmer – and she only included his name in the song as it fit the rhyme. Speaking in a video posted on TikTok, she explained: “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.
“The whole Jeffrey Dahmer lyric in ‘Cannibal’ is a big controversy right now. 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. Literally, the way it happened is I have this rhyming program called Master Writer for Songwriters. 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.'”
Pebe went on to insist the songwriters “never meant to hurt anybody” and she’s sorry for all the victims and their families.
She added: “Not to be insensitive to anybody whose families were involved in this and lost loved ones. 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.
“I’m sorry for anyone who’s lost a family member in this tragedy. We certainly never meant to hurt anybody or make anybody feel bad. There’s a [series] out right now that’s kind of bringing attention back. The song’s been out for more than 10 years, probably almost 12 years. This is not something that we’ve recently written.”
