It was the day after Christmas, and we were dancing at 12th & Porter while Ke$ha danced barely three feet away. She already had the No. 2 song in the country, but she wouldn’t be a global it-girl for at least another week. Had we known that, a month later, we’d be fighting with Rolling Stone and most of the European Union to land an interview, we would have just violated the first rule of the Nashville Celebrity-Industrial Complex to cut in.

But at that point, Ke$ha — born Kesha Rose Sebert — was still just a girl from Brentwood who’d moved to L.A. to make pop records. Tons of artists head to the Left Coast to make music with big-name producers every year, but rarely do those albums see the light of day, never mind launch a single like “TiK ToK” — the hook-laden, bawdy dance-pop monster that recently sucker punched Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” for the longest run of consecutive weeks on top of Billboard’s Hot 100 charts. Not that we weren’t pulling for the sassy 23-year-old, but that sort of success is rare, and even rarer among people who’ve allegedly made out with not one, but two members of our Monday-night trivia team.

Then, Ke$ha didn’t have a No. 1 record, Animal, or two hit singles. She’d just finished a tour opening for second-tier shock-rapper Mickey Avalon, and her first single was climbing, but she wasn’t a red-carpet staple yet. “TiK ToK” hadn’t partied into every commercial bumper on the cable spectrum, and she definitely didn’t hold the record for most digital songs — 610,000 — sold in a single week. Yep, that’s almost one for every person in Davidson County.

In other words, the concepts of “waking up feeling like P. Diddy” and “brushing your teeth with a bottle of Jack,” as “TiK ToK” cheekily slurs, were still unknown in America’s middle schools. Ke$ha was just another local kid whose mom had a country cut in the ’80s and was trying to make a go at the big show herself. Not exactly a rarity: If you’re reading this and left the house today, chances are pretty good that you ran across a songwriter’s kid.

But where her crosstown pop peers play the game, Ke$ha’s the smart girl who gets bored quick and starts causing trouble. Taylor Swift has her shrinking-violet, Eisenhower-era femininity. Paramore’s Hayley Williams has her brooding mall-goth shtick. But Ke$ha is loud, brash and unapologetic when it comes to her sexuality and her idea of a good time.

Take second single “Blah Blah Blah,” the slick, synth-drenched hip-house revival that kept her out of the one-hit wonder club. She isn’t through the first verse before demanding that the song’s intended “show me where your dick’s at.” Not exactly the rainbows-and-unicorn abstinence porn that the rest of the ladies in town deal in. (We suspect there aren’t too many local gals making records who’d pee in a sink and use it as a promotional talking point, as Ke$ha did this fall.)

Predictably, this attitude is a lightning rod. For every critic who takes her seriously, another declares her responsible for the fall of western civilization. “It’s hard to remember the last time an album so flat and vacuous generated such a buzz,” wrote James Reed of the Boston Globe. In the less formalized world of Internet commenters, you’d think Ke$ha was going door to door handing out heroin and butt plugs to every girl old enough to walk.

In reality, Ke$ha represents a rather typical strain of contemporary lady-dom. She’s not creating some new form of immorality — she’s just 23 years old in America today, and doesn’t couch it for the culture warriors and conservatives who weren’t going to buy her record anyway. The New York Times got all sorts of excited that a white girl happened to rap on a song, but that song was manufactured in the same hit factory that produced Katy Perry and Avril Lavigne. This is no cultural fluke.

Besides, in a city built on the art of reaching the common denominator in verse, is it really surprising that a second-generation songwriter could tap into our proclivity for post-adolescent hedonism and ride it all the way to the top? Sure, it ain’t solving world hunger, but it takes intuition and intelligence to tap the jugular of the international pop consciousness.

Ask anyone who knew Ke$ha back in the day – like one Ben Harville, who played Radiohead’s “Karma Police” with her at the seventh-grade talent show (totes adorable YouTube video, bee-tee-dub) – and they’ll tell you that the space-cadet party-girl shtick is an act. If you fall for it, you’ve just been outsmarted.

Of course, none of this was going through our heads that night at 12th & Porter. Then, she was just a girl on the dance floor. No team of publicists trying to coordinate transcontinental press junkets, and no indication that, within a few weeks, she’d be one of the biggest stars in the world. Just a local girl having a good time at a local club — no reason to be rude in the name of journalism. ­—SEAN L. MALONEY

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R&B singer-songwriter Taio Cruz (it’s pronounced “Tie-Oh”) has already made a name for himself back home in the UK, where the sweet-voiced 26-year-old scored a number one record last year with the club-ready “Break Your Heart.” (He’s also penned hits for Brit-centric acts like Tinchy Stryder, Cheryl Cole, and Sugababes.) Now, “Heart” is racing up the US singles charts, putting Cruz on track for transatlantic pop stardom. EW caught up with him this week to find out more about his upcoming album (due in the states this summer), his influences, and his new video with Ke$ha.

EW: You’re shooting a video with Ke$ha, right?
TC: It’s the second single off my new album Rokstarr. It’s called “Dirty Picture.”

EW: How did you two hook up?
TC: I had heard of Ke$ha ages ago, before she put out “Tik Tok.” And I wanted to do some work with Dr. Luke, who produced her album. I loved her voice. It’s got this awesome kind of yodel-y effect to it. I’d produced and written this “Dirty Picture” song, so I just thought, let’s put a female on it. She loved the song, and now she’s kind of blowing up and becoming a humongous superstar. So I offered to come down for the video.

EW: What can you tell us about it?
TC: The concept for the video is bascially, we’re gonna have the coolest, most underground scene ever, like being invited to this party that only the coolest most trendy can be invited to. And we’re just going to have a raunchy dirty party where people take pictures of themselves in corners doing naughty things and sending them to each other all over the place. And she’s in a bathroom being filmed. It’s kind of fashiony in that it’s a bit dirty, but very slick the way it’s filmed.

EW: Anything else?
TC: It’s got a few twists that I don’t want to say yet. It’s going to be good though.

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The German Phono Academy has announced the winners of the first five categories of the ECHO Awards, with Ke$ha added to the line-up of performers at the ceremony in Berlin.

The producers of the year honor went to Andreas Herbig, Peter “Jem” Seifert, Florian Fischer, Adel Tawil, Annette Humpe and Sebastian Kirchner for the German duo Ich+Ich (Polydor/Universal). The duo will also perform at the March 4 ceremony at Berlin fair grounds, along with Robbie Williams, Sade and Gossip. It will be broadcast live on German TV station ARD.

Schlager singer Helene Fischer won DVD of the year for “Zaubermond Live” (Electrola/EMI). A special award for social commitment went to Irish-born Rea Garvey and his German group Reamonn for their children’s foundation Saving an Angel.

Amazon.de was named as the retailer of the year, while the radio station SWR 3 in Baden-Baden won the media award.

The awards were presented on a charity dinner for the foundation “Music Helps” in Berlin.

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Ke$ha has revealed that she will adopt a more grown up sound when she records her second album.

The singer, who topped the Billboard 200 with debut LP Animal, claimed that she will look to her heritage to get inspiration for the follow-up.

“Coming from Nashville, I love Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, and want to make those records too. But right now, it’s my ‘f**k off’, fun period and I’m gonna enjoy it,” she told Q magazine.

Ke$ha reportedly worked on her debut album for seven years prior to its release, writing over 200 songs for the LP.

She previously recorded backing vocals for Paris Hilton’s debut album.

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SINGER Ke$ha has launched a scathing attack at Britney Spears.

The Tik Tok hitmaker — who featured on Britney’s track Lace And Leather — doesn’t like the fact Spears lip-syncs during her concerts.

“I think that’s bulls***,” she said. “I don’t think that’s fair at all for people who are going to see the show. I think if you are going to be a singer, you should sing. If you are going to be a dancer, you should dance.

“If you are going to do a combination of the two, you should make it very clear when you are singing and very clear when you are dancing. I would never do that to my fans.

“No offense to her specifically but people have asked me before to mime. I have been up at three in the morning for a television show with jet lag but I refuse to mime.

“It’s treating people as if they are too stupid to realize you are not actually singing. Sometimes it is hard to sing and dance at the same time but I would rather be off and be real and genuine about it to my fans. I don’t want to treat my fans like they are stupid.

“That is my take on my fans and life in general. My whole record is super-honest. I am really honest. When I am singing I may sound s*** sometimes but at least you’ll know I’m singing.”

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