Ke$ha battles the pink robots…

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[5.40]

Alfred Soto: With guitars like black sheets of rain and Ke$ha to match, the oddest collaboration of the year takes off. (If you’ve ever wanted to hear Ke$ha croon over a Mellotron, this is your track). Since I don’t give a damn about Wayne Coyne, I question his motives: maybe hiring a divisive pop star and a rap legend match his quaint notions of exoticism. Either way, a better paint thinner than Ke$ha purportedly is, according to Flaming Lips fans.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Of only marginal interest to the Ke$ha fans for whom she’s not weird enough here, to the Flaming Lips fans for whom the cred-loss isn’t worth whatever orneriness points are gained, and to whatever poor Biz Markie fans still wander the earth.
[6]

Iain Mew: I don’t know if I would have picked out the singer here as being Ke$ha if I didn’t already know. Her vocals are so much of a better fit to The Flaming Lips’ newly re-energised trips into the experimental than Wayne Coyne’s completely shot voice that I wish that the arrangement could be permanent, though. She gives the stargazing beauty of the middle section an edge that would surely have otherwise turned saccharine, and in turn makes the ending, where the song scratches itself to death, feel fitting and thrilling. The only thing I’d change is to cut down the jagged riffs of the beginning a bit, because it’s by far the least rewarding section of the three.
[7]

Zach Lyon: I thought that we had gotten rid of her. After 2 years you’d figure she would have just gone away forever, but no: back and worse than ever. 
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Jonathan Bradley: Ke$ha makes a lot of sense as a trashy art-punk (if she weren’t one already), but that idea’s far more interesting than the lumbering, graceless execution.
[3]

Anthony Easton: I think Ke$ha becomes closest to being important or interesting  when she turns abrasive and ugly — and when she becomes self aware of how abrasive and ugly other people find her. I think the Flaming Lips become closest to being important when they realise how the “traditional” avant garde can be overtaken by the mechanics of pop music. Both of them working through Biz Markie’s hip hop argot makes something almost ugly enough to be ambitious.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m beginning to tire of Ke$ha’s deliberate weirdness; it comes off as affected and calculated, doing for cred what Nicki Minaj’s splitting herself like a starfish (meant to divide) does for her market base. That said, this is pretty compelling: a minute or so of languid drift caught in a loud, abrasive vise, as if you’d told someone to compose a Sleigh Bells song based entirely on capsule reviews talking about blown-out guitars, chanted pop vocals and BADASS LOUDNESS. On the other hand, you’d get the same thing if you substituted reviews of Lulu.
[6]

John Seroff: Even by this goulash of an album’s standards, the list of personnel here seems better suited for an exquisite corpse, a fever dream, or a Judgment Night 2 soundtrack. The execution doesn’t offer many surprises to anyone even glancingly familiar with the principals, except perhaps that Biz’s sole contribution appears to be a “burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb GRIM REAPAH” shout. I take that back: who could be surprised by Biz, or any of these jokers, clowning on a track so precariously balanced between pretension and freakout? Anyone seeking a central thesis could trash pick among the quasi-tribal tekno-wreckage and come away with either a nuanced, frank ur-poem on the expectations of pop’s backward-looking reflectio or Coyne just dicking around. The point is more or less moot since “2012” (i c what u did there) lacks the savor to merit scrounging for sustenance.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Can’t get too excited about Ke$ha working with the Lips because, for one thing, seeking validation for pop is so dull. For another, Coyne and co. seem set on reviving the freak-show marginalia of their early years without an accompanying compositional sense. “2012” welds the most metallic Bo Diddley beat ever to a topline lifted from “Setting Sun,” There’s a Mellotron in the middle. The obnoxiousness drips of calculation — K-Dollar sounds so stranded, I can’t help wondering if she was recruited for her Q Score. I hope everyone’s 2012 gets better.
[5]

Jer Fairall: At countless points throughout my youth, and quite a few during my adulthood for that matter, I have undoubtedly scoffed at many a grown up, perhaps even a beloved grandparent, for their sweeping assertions that “today’s music” is “just noise.” Now, in 2012 and on “2012,” I would like to offer them all the sincerest of apologies.
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