Happy birthday, Ke$ha! You’re one of us.

It’s singer Ke$ha’s 27th birthday today, and we’d like to wish her many happy returns. From getting herself ordained as a minister so she could marry her two gay friends, to recording a track about having sex with a ghost, Ke$ha really is one of us.

Two and a half albums and one reality show into her career, and Ke$ha has yet to shake off the “talentless mare” tag that the general public seem to have given her. That’s a shame, because behind the thick layer of glitter lies a talented singer-songwriter with a supportive message.

She wrote her 2010 smash hit We R Who We R in response to a surge in suicide rates among gay teens in the States – and said she hoped it would go on to become an anthem for LGBT pride.

Unlikely as it may seem, Ke$ha is also kind of a genius. She has an IQ of 140, and achieved an almost perfect score on her SATs (the US equivalent t0 A-Levels). She might seem like the party-crashing type, but she actually used to crash University classes, attending lectures on anything from Marxism to The Cold War just for fun. Her excuse? “I love learning.”

She’s also a gifted pop craftswoman, co-writing all her own hits as well as Britney’s euphoric banger Till the World Ends. If you manage to get beyond her Auto-Tuned club tracks, you’ll find some truly heart-breaking ballads on her albums. The Harold Song, about a boyfriend that cheated on her, who she’s still in love with today, is just devastating.

The TiK ToK songstress certainly has her quirks, none more ridiculous than her obsession with bearded men. She even runs a Tumblr exclusively containing pictures of her with beards in her mouth – see left.

What we love most about her, though, is her underdog status. She’s worked hard, and she’s never been the popular hot girl (as her high school picture proves) that Britney and Katy so clearly were. However, she’s still managed to claw her way up to becoming one of the biggest popstars in the world.

“I went through the awkward, chubby total weirdo phase. I was in a marching band. Did you ever think a chubby, awkward girl with braces in the marching band would be Number One on the top of the pop charts? No, you wouldn’t,” Ke$ha has said.

She’s currently in rehab for an eating disorder – caused perhaps, at least in part, by the bullying she receives on a daily basis through social media. Never one to be broken, however, she recently tweeted ‘#PARTYON’ from rehab.

We love you, Ke$ha. Never change.