Kesha showed her support for LGBTQ rights and love for her fans at Saturday’s Spring Concert.

Before the concert, Catherine Almazan, a senior sociology major, said she was happy to have Kesha come.

“I’m excited for it. I’m thankful I can see it for free because I’m with University Board,” Almazan said. “It should be a fun concert.”

Almazan said she hoped Kesha would play some of her older hits.

“I’m really hoping she plays ‘Sleazy’ and ‘Tik Tok’ and stuff like that,” Almazan said. “Around my high school years she really came out and she really just stood out to me because she showed that she just didn’t care about what people thought and she was able to just be herself.”

Emma Bevis, a junior early childhood education major from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, said she has wanted to go to a Kesha concert for a long time. Once she saw there was a concert near where she went to school, Bevis said she had to seize the opportunity.

“I have wanted to come to a Kesha concert since I was in the eighth grade and I found out my friends were going. The first time I met one of my friends, she told me she had already been to a Kesha concert,” Bevis said. “Now I’m here with her. So, I’m very excited to be here.”

Bevis said she listened to Kesha all the time during junior high school.

“If I wanted to listen to something fun, I would always listen to Kesha,” Bevis said. “I’m so excited. It still doesn’t feel real.”

During her performance, Kesha played crowd favorites including “Blow,” “Take It Off” and “Tik Tok.”

Although her concert was filled with lights, confetti and glitter, Kesha got personal with the crowd by showing her strong support of LGBTQ rights. One of the members of “The Creepies” waved a rainbow flag and gave a short speech about the equality of all love.

Kesha was unable to play any of her new songs off the album “Warrior,” or unreleased songs, which she said she had 75 of, because of an ongoing lawsuit with her producer over sexual assault and battery charges. During the concert, she thanked her fans for sticking by her through the last few, difficult years.

“Thank you guys for standing by me through all of this,” Kesha said. “You guys are my f—ing everything.”

Hugo Escobar, concert coordinator for the University Board, said he was pleased with how the concert turned out and is looking forward to helping with next year’s concert as well.

“I think it went really well. I think it went a lot better than we were expecting it to,” Escobar said. “She got the chance to meet some of us and she was a really nice person.”

Escobar said his favorite song by Kesha would have to be “Tik Tok.”

“I was in high school when ‘Tik Tok’ came out and I thought it was one of the catchiest pop songs I had ever heard,” Escobar said.

Escobar said ticket sales were something else he was pleased about.

“We had about 2,400 tickets sold and max was about 3,000 so we were really excited,” Escobar said. “Hopefully it keeps up next year.”

Chrissy Miller can be reached at 581-2812 or clmiller9@eiu.edu.