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Kesha and Ne-Yo will play the Wawa Welcome America concert in Philly on July 4

The pop and R&B stars will sing before the fireworks go off above the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Songwriter and pop star Kesha performs at The Fillmore in Phila., Pa. on October 7, 2017. The pop star will headline the Wawa Welcome America Concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 4, along with Ne-Yo.
Songwriter and pop star Kesha performs at The Fillmore in Phila., Pa. on October 7, 2017. The pop star will headline the Wawa Welcome America Concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 4, along with Ne-Yo.Read moreElizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
    by Dan DeLuca
    Published 

The headliners for this year’s July 4 Wawa Welcome America concert on the Ben Franklin Parkway have been announced: It’s Kesha and Ne-Yo.

The lineup for the free concert, which will be staged in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps and immediately followed by a fireworks display to cap off the city’s Welcome America festival, was announced by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker on Tuesday morning.

On top of the bill is Kesha, the Los Angeles-born singer who had her first break-out success with the hit singles, “TiK ToK” and “Your Love Is My Drug,” from her 2010 debut album, Animal. She is also scheduled to play the Etess Arena at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City on July 3.

She has been in the news in the last decade for a legal battle with producer Dr. Luke, whom she accused of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in a lawsuit she filed in 2014. The case was settled out of court last year, and her most recent album, recorded with producer Rick Rubin and released in May of last year, is called Gag Order.

Ne-Yo is the smooth R&B singer born Shaffer Smith who had his biggest hits in the mid-00′s with “So Sick,” “Because of You,” and “Sexy Love.” His most recent album is 2022′s Self-Explanatory.

This will be the first Welcome America concert after Parker took office, and it maintains the level of star power seen in the later days of the Kenney administration. Last year, the show was headlined by Demi Lovato, with Ludacris also on the bill.

In 2022, Jason Derulo, Ava Max, and Tori Kelly performed, and sounds of gunfire during the after-concert fireworks led to crowds fleeing in panic and two police officers being injured. In 2021, the concert’s first year back after being canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Flo Rida headlined the celebrations staged at the Mann Center.

For the second year in a row, the free July 4 concert will be the only outsized musical gathering on the Parkway in the summer after Jay-Z’s Made in America festival, a Labor Day weekend tradition since 2012, was canceled.

This year, the Independence Day show has major competition across the river in Camden. Willie Nelson is bringing his 4th of July Picnic to the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, with guests including Bob Dylan, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, and Mavis Staples. It’s the first time Nelson’s festival will ever be staged on the East Coast.