As I wrote in the music issue this week, Kesha had a very bad year this year. Or at least from the outside, it looks like it was a tough year; I don’t want to presume to know what she’s thinking or feeling. If it was a tough year, Kesha is certainly not alone; seems like just about everyone I know had a rough year. (I have already written about my desire to murder and bury 2014.) I hope next year is better for you. I hope next year is better for everyone. I hope next year is better for Kesha, too.

We are not very far away from seeing the first generation of musicians who were huge fans of Kesha as children, and I can’t wait for that moment to arrive. Kesha has been nothing but a positive influence on pop music; she’s about having fun, and believing in yourself, and understanding that your art can’t always be perfect but it can always be passionate. I hope she remembers that as she moves into 2015 and makes new music. Hopefully, Kesha won’t feel penned-in by the drunk party girl image she created for herself. But that image is still a powerful and necessary one; I hope, too, she’ll be able to forge a new path that doesn’t feel like a repudiation of her old choices, too.

Since I’m clocking out for the remainder of 2014—Jen Graves, Emily Nokes, and Charles Mudede will be keeping you company here on Slog for the last two days of the year—and since she’s on my mind lately, I’ve decided to go out with a Kesha-centric Song of the Day. “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You,” written by Kesha’s mother Patricia Sebert in 1978 and covered by Ke$ha (back when she was still Ke$ha and not Kesha) in 2012, has been covered by Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton. I think Kesha does a better job with the song, because she captures a sense of longing in the lyrics that the other two readings completely miss. Parton’s duet makes it an ode to monogamy and to appreciating the one you’re with, but Kesha understands that something sad happens when you meet up with someone you used to love and you realize that what you used to feel has faded into something completely different. It’s possible to celebrate the present and to mourn the past simultaneously. That seems like the right reading of the song to me, and I think that makes it a really good song to close out the year.