The song opens with several images the symbolize wealth and status: a swimming pool in the backyard, the needlessly expensive food and cars, a cigar in the caviar (what!?). These images are interrupted by calls to action, calls to destroy or otherwise tarnish these representations of wealth.

Ke$ha relishes materialism—she’s excited about partying at this rich dude’s house! But she doesn’t enjoy “being rich” in the same way rich people do. This iconoclastic, destructive use of wealth reflects Ke$ha’s aesthetic: money is great, but it doesn’t do you any good if you can’t thoroughly and freely consume it.

Ke$ha also plays with the intersection of trashy and classy. She represents this entropic, needlessly destructive force that rebels directly against everything that’s prim and proper for its own sake. She doesn’t need to piss in the Dom Perignon. But she does it because she can.

Also, the part about peeing is a real thing she does. As she stated in an interview:

Anyway, I think champagne is gross and kind of tastes like pee. So to show my disdain for it, I pee in the bottles"

She couldn’t enjoy the small good things in life like jokes and listening to rock because they reminded her of him, and they were no longer together.

The entire Born This Way album was heavily influenced by rock, a departure from Gaga’s first two albums. In a sort of meta commentary, this song is a testament that she survived this relationship.

Whiskey is associated with strength, ruggedness, machismo. When Gaga can taste the whiskey on her lover’s lips, she partakes in his inebriation and is welcomed into his brash, rough-around-the-edges universe.

There’s a lot of nostalgia in this song, reveling in the remnants of the past, and what makes this even more real is that Gaga had the taste of whiskey in her mouth as she was recording this track!

I had about 30 cigarettes and a couple of glasses of Jameson and just put on a click track and sang my face off, thinking we’d redo the vocals.

Producer Mutt Lange loved what she sent and kept it for the song.

“In the nick of time” is a smart play on her name (Nic) and the common phrase meaning “at the very last moment.” She’s saying she’s the new girl, the savior of female rap. She just realized that she is Nicki Minaj and the burden of representing female rap is all or her.

Everybody recognizes Nicki wherever she comes and goes. Her style is distinct and unique.

Even when she’s not all decked out as Nicki Minaj, Onika has a hard time going anywhere without being recognized. Before she got on the radio, during the mixtape days, she was the only underground bitch around that was ducking the paparazzi.

As with the first line, this one also has a second, sexual meaning behind the more innocuous/apparent one. It’s easy to recognize Nicki’s orgasm. Because she put two sticks in her bun, they recognize her when she cums. Her orgasm is distinctive and easily identifiable, just like her style.

People are jealous of Nicki because she is winning, and they are not. Headline could be alluding to the way Nicki is always making headlines in the news and tabloids. It’s more likely, however, a reference to the fact that she headlined Summer Jam (an event that she didn’t end up performing at).

Wordplay: You do crunches while working out… so if you’re not working out, “it ain’t crunchtime.”

What ain’t working out?

• When other rappers see her winning, they wanna hurry (i.e., crunch time) and try getting there stuff together because they wanna win to, but “it ain’t working out.”
• Nicki is trying to teach these bitches how to be a good punchline rappers. But they’re not very good students; they lack intelligence and talent. This learning moment ain’t working out so well.