The wording attached to “True Colors” has always mattered. It was not a leak, a contractual escape hatch or an illicit Kesha recording smuggled onto the internet. It was a formally released Zedd single, made with Kesha and issued through Interscope, Kemosabe and RCA after the labels approved it. That distinction is essential because the record arrived while Kesha’s freedom to work was the subject of an unusually public legal struggle.
Released on April 29, 2016, “True Colors” was also not an entirely new composition. Zedd had included an earlier version on his 2015 album of the same name, with songwriter-producer Tim James singing lead. Kesha’s performance transformed that existing song rather than introducing an unrelated work with a familiar title.
From an album track to a Coachella revelation
The original “True Colors” appeared as track six on Zedd’s second album. His official album archive confirms its place in the 2015 sequence, while the detailed MusicBrainz release record identifies Tim James as the lead vocalist and credits Zedd and Rock Mafia with production.
The song changed meaning in public on April 16, 2016. Near the end of Zedd’s Coachella set, Kesha emerged in black and sang it without making a speech. Contemporary reports published the following day documented the surprise appearance; Us Weekly’s account dates the performance to Saturday, April 16, despite some retrospective summaries listing April 17—the date on which coverage appeared.
That calendar detail resolves one small conflict surrounding the record. The performance happened on April 16; much of the first reporting was dated April 17. The studio single then appeared at the end of the month. Zedd’s official audio was uploaded on April 28, while the widely reported commercial release date was Friday, April 29. Regional digital stores can display April 28 because of time zones, but April 29 remains the clearest historical date for the global release campaign.
Why the authorization mattered
At the time, Kesha and producer Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald were litigating allegations and contractual claims. Kesha alleged sexual and emotional abuse; Gottwald denied wrongdoing and pursued a defamation case. Earlier in 2016, a New York judge had declined to grant the preliminary injunction Kesha sought in an effort to free herself from her recording arrangement. A concise contemporary summary of her position and the ruling appears in TIME’s February report.
Against that background, rumors that Kesha had somehow circumvented her contract were understandable but wrong. Zedd publicly stated that Kemosabe and RCA had authorized the release and that no loophole was used. The Fader reported that The New York Times had confirmed the single as a joint Interscope and RCA/Kemosabe release. The Los Angeles Times likewise described it as fully sanctioned.
Calling the song a “legal release” is therefore accurate in the ordinary sense that it was approved and distributed by the relevant labels. It should not be stretched into a claim that the single resolved Kesha’s contract or settled her litigation. It did neither. It was a narrow, authorized collaboration achieved inside the structure she was contesting.
The parties eventually announced a private resolution of the defamation lawsuit in June 2023, shortly before a scheduled trial. As The Washington Post reported, the settlement ended that case without a trial determining the competing factual accounts. Reading the 2016 single through later history should not erase that unresolved distinction.
Who wrote and produced the recording
Digital credits for the Kesha single list Anton Zaslavski—Zedd’s legal name—Antonina Armato and T. Price as songwriters, with Zedd and Rock Mafia as producers. Those credits can be viewed on the Apple Music song page. “T. Price” refers to Timothy James Price, professionally known as Tim James, the vocalist and co-writer associated with the 2015 version.
Kesha is the featured performer but is not listed as a songwriter in those principal platform credits. That is worth stating because her delivery fits the words so closely that cultural commentary has often treated the track as autobiography. The recording’s force comes from the meeting of a pre-existing composition and her public circumstances, not from proof that she wrote its lyrics about her lawsuit.
Musically, the remake keeps the song’s muted keyboard opening and patient electronic architecture. It resists the immediate festival drop expected from a major EDM producer. Percussion and bright synthetic layers accumulate gradually, leaving Kesha’s voice exposed for much of the ascent. Her vocal is less conversational than the half-rapped style that powered early hits such as “Tik Tok”; it moves from restraint toward a full-throated climax.
That contrast is interpretation, but it is grounded in the recording. The production does not merely place a celebrity guest over an interchangeable dance track. Its slow expansion gives the performance the shape of a statement being gathered in real time.
A comeback single, with qualifications
Contemporary coverage regularly called “True Colors” Kesha’s first release in three years. The Guardian’s review framed it that way, contrasting the song with her 2013 Pitbull collaboration “Timber.” More precisely, it was her first prominent, officially released new vocal performance since that period and the first single bearing her name during the contract fight. It was not the start of an immediate independent era.
The track’s chart life was modest relative to the attention around it. The Official Charts archive records its British chart entry in May 2016, while U.S. summaries place its Hot 100 peak well below Kesha’s earlier blockbusters. Commercial scale, however, is not the only measure relevant to this particular record.
The most important evidence of its status remains the official release itself. Zedd’s rights-holder channel published “True Colors” as official audio, explicitly presenting it as the Zedd and Kesha collaboration. Various fan-made or unofficial “music videos” have circulated since, sometimes carrying misleading descriptions. They should not be confused with that authorized audio upload.
“True Colors” endures because context altered the emotional ownership of a song without changing its documented authorship. Zedd supplied a composition already embedded in his catalog; Kesha supplied a performance audiences could not separate from her struggle to regain control of her career. The labels supplied permission, an uncomfortable but decisive fact. Together, those elements made a sanctioned pop single sound like a public act of resistance—even though the legal conflict around it was far from over.