After releasing the deliberately polarizing Scarlet in 2023 (followed by a reissue called Scarlet 2 Claude in 2024), Doja Cat seems to have done yet another swing back in the opposite direction. One that is aimed more toward the very genre she claimed she was running as far and fast away from as she could back in 2023, when she tweeted, “Planet Her and Hot Pink were cash-grabs and y’all fell for it.” Further describing the content on those records as “mediocre pop.” At the time, a great many fans were upset by the comment, while others insisted it was all somehow part of her Scarlet persona. And maybe it was, considering Doja would, as of this year, describe that album as a “massive fart” that just needed to be released. A way to express her anger and rage over a few things, including not being “taken seriously” as an artist. So it was that she explained in an interview with The New York Times, “Not to diminish it, but it was a bit of like, I just need to get this out—it was a massive fart for me. I thought fixing that would entail making music that was more visceral or more emotional or maybe more angry or more sad. And I enjoyed performing it onstage, but it didn’t get me all the way there. So I want to return back to what I know.”
And return she has. Not just to the pure pop that Hot Pink and Planet Her embodied, but also even farther back than that, all the way to the 80s (though Doja herself was born in 1995). Because, sure, it’s been “a while” since someone wielded that shtick, with the most recent notable example being Dua Lipa’s 2020 album, Future Nostalgia, drenched in the same 80s-centric stylings on Vie, which marks Doja Cat’s fifth record in seven years (with 2018’s Amala being her debut). But Doja takes it more than just a few steps further than Lipa in terms of centering the album’s entire universe in the 80s. Because it’s not just a sound, it’s a world, with Doja committed to staying in character while inhabiting that world. This, of course, extends to her visual accompaniments—whether it’s the music videos she’s released thus far (see: “Jealous Type” and “Gorgeous”)—or the album variants that feature her on the cover in various 80s getups (particularly the Quality Time vinyl edition). All of this proving the accuracy of what she told Michelle Miller of CBS Sunday Morning: “I’m always wanting to, like, create a character, like, create some sort of narrative and theme and world. World-building.”
To establish that world immediately on Vie, Doja begins with “Cards,” which, for about the first fifteen seconds, sounds like it could be something from a Blood Orange album (it’s the saxophone). But then, with its production from Y2K, Gavin Bennett and Jack Antonoff (who worked on nine of the fifteen tracks, and who makes music that usually sounds 80s-esque anyway), the song bursts forth in some very Janet Jackson circa Control type of glory. This as Doja opens with the chorus, “A little more back and forth/A little more catch and throw, baby/The more we can clear this smoke/A little further I’ll go/Maybe in time, we’ll know/Maybe I’ll fall in love, baby/Maybe we’ll win some hearts/Gotta just play your cards.” The up-tempo pace of the track instantly establishes the exuberant tone that Doja is going for, in addition to ruminating on her love of romance—intermixed with sex, of course. This intoxicating combination evident in the lines, “If you play fair, stranger/It’s all you could eat while I lay there, stranger” (that word, stranger, also being the title of track six on Vie). At the same time, Doja exhibits the shyness of a girl looking for true love when she says, “I’m enough to wait for/Move too quick and you off the roster.”
As the saxophone plays us out of “Cards,” Doja’s warning fittingly transitions into “Jealous Type.” For it’s apparent that once she (or her “character”) does open her heart to someone, she’s not liable to let them “muck about” with others so readily. Once again starting the song with the chorus (which will be a common occurrence on Vie), Doja soon asks the question, “Could be torn between two roads that I just can’t decide/Which one is leading me to hell or paradise?” This meaning that Doja can’t quite decide between remaining “dulcet” or going full AK-47 in terms of expressing her feelings of jealousy. Something she does manage to convey regardless in the second verse, rapping, “And if she really was a friend like you said she was/I would’ve been locked in, but I called your bluff/No girl enjoys trying to tough it out for a party boy/Everyone wants you and you love all the noise.” In a sense, it’s almost like she’s channeling Evelyn Richards in American Psycho (whose name is changed to Evelyn Williams [played by Reese Witherspoon] in the film version), who has some similar sentiments toward Patrick Bateman.
And yes, needless to say, this is probably exactly the type of album that, had it actually been released in the 1980s, Bateman would have been sure to pontificate about in one of the chapters. Granted, Bateman couldn’t cover every piece of 80s pop culture, including Knight Rider, which is not one of the things he finds worthy of mentioning at any point in American Psycho. Doja Cat, however, seems to figure that, since Vie is an “80s album,” the Knight Rider theme is a natural fit for “AAAHH MEN!,” even though Busta Rhymes already locked down that sample in 1997 with “Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up.” What’s more, it seems that Antonoff enjoys working on tracks wherein female singers make a play on words using “men” and “amen” (hear also: “Manchild”).
Of course, Doja has more of a legitimate reason to wield the Knight Rider theme than Busta in that she raps, “And if had more common sense/Then I would grab my ride and dip.” She also adds to that sentiment, “And I have too much tolerance/You ugly and fine as shit.” That latter dichotomous line referring to how a man can be aesthetically foyn, but still repulsive “on the inside,” thanks to his “personality” (or lack thereof). Even so, Doja seems always willing to take a chance on romance. Even with the knowledge that romance so often gives way to reality, ergo a loss of the rose-colored glasses that can then lead to so much tension and fighting. Thus, a need for “Couples Therapy,” which happens to be track four on Vie.
It’s this sweeping, lush song that particularly conjures Doja telling Jimmy Fallon, “I’m very inspired by Janet. I’m very inspired by Michael and Prince.” And yet, there’s even brief auditory glimpses of Aaliyah (specifically, “Rock the Boat”) as Doja narrates the problems of some other couple, rather than speaking about herself or her own relationship. This bringing to mind the distinction of her writing process that she made to Miller on CBS Sunday Morning, noting, “When I’m writing, I’m writing about situations in general. I’m not really, um, always pulling from my personal life” and “I love to talk about love. I love to talk about, um, you know, relationships and dynamics and things like that.” Carrie Bradshaw would tend to agree.
Interestingly, “Couples Therapy” starts out with Doja talking about a relationship from the third person perspective before switching to the first: “She just wants him to be involved/He just wants her to finally notice/They just need one more push to cope/Can we both detangle our souls?/This argument’s been in the oven/We can’t always be in control.” This, in fact, channels Madonna’s 1989 “divorce track” from Like A Prayer, “Till Death Do Us Part,” on which she sings with the same perspective shift, “Our luck is running out of time/You’re not in love with me anymore/I wish that it would change but it won’t/‘Cause you don’t love me no more/He takes a drink, she goes inside/He starts to scream, the vases fly/He wishes that she wouldn’t cry/He’s not in love with her anymore.” Yes, maybe Madonna and Sean just needed couples therapy—though it wasn’t as “chic” in the 80s to seek that kind of help. Just ask The Roses.
But, at least after becoming newly divorced and/or single again, a person can feel like their former “Gorgeous” self. This being the second single from Vie after “Jealous Type.” And yes, with this particular track, Doja is sure to cover a different kind of romance: the kind that somebody has with themselves a.k.a. self-love. So it is that Doja remarked of “Gorgeous”: “[It’s] not about being in a relationship with someone else, it’s about how you relate to yourself and how you feel about yourself. And that was something that I really wanted to kind of convey in this song.” Which she definitely does (“I mean I only got myself to appeal to [I do]),” along with the feeling that this should be playing during one of Gia Carangi’s photoshoots (the lyric, “She wanna be chic when it’s inspired by heroin” being especially resonant). Or during one of Bateman’s murder sprees. Either way, it’s among the most 80s songs of Vie, which really means something (this along with the fact that Charli XCX’s newly-minted husband, George Daniel, is one of the co-writers and co-producers). In fact, it’s almost like Doja took a page out of The Weeknd’s playbook for this entire record, for he’s been dipping into that 80s sound well for a while, especially since 2020’s After Hours.
And it would track that Doja could have been inspired as much by The Weeknd as any pop artist from “back in the day,” for she’s no “Stranger” to collaborating with him, having done so on a remix of his 2020 song “In Your Eyes” and in 2021 for “You Right” from Planet Her. Who knows, maybe she even has him partially in mind when she opens “Stranger” with, “We could be strange/At least we’re not the same.” Later, she’ll add, “And I believe the weirdest ones survive.” This echoes one of Madonna’s recent aphorisms on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, during which she declared, “Not fitting in is what saves you.” Granted, Doja speaks on some pretty normie couple behavior when she says, “Call me over to watch some White Lotus.” This perhaps serving to remind listeners that she did make a song with one of season three’s cast members, LISA—namely, “Born Again,” which also features RAYE. Not to mention her fairly basique nod to Kill Bill for the “Stranger” video. But, in any case, it’s a sweet song, and one that relishes the joys of finding one’s fellow “weirdo” in life.
With that in mind, Doja seems only too pleased to make her fellow weirdo “All Mine” on the following track, which features a prominent nod to Grace Jones, both in sound, tone and, well, the opening sample of dialogue. Dialogue that comes from Conan the Destroyer, with Princess Jehnna (Olivia d’Abo) asking Zula (Jones), “How do you attract a man? What I mean is, suppose you set your heart on somebody. What would you do to get him?” to which Zula instantly replies, with the same “savagery” as a man, “Grab him, and take him.” Or what a certain Orange Creature, especially during his 80s heyday, would rephrase as “grab ‘em by the dick.” That Conan the Destroyer was released in 1984 only intensifies Doja’s commitment to the “world building” of Vie, which exists solely in the 80s (complete with her public appearances in promotion of the album, during which she’s dressed in attire befitting said era). Save, of course, for the lyrical content itself.
In the spirit of Zula’s advisement, Doja croons in tune with the mid-tempo track, “I ain’t waiting around, yeah/I’ll be taking him out, yeah/‘Cause I’m only about him/Wanting what we want/Claiming what we claim/Make you say my name/And I’m all yours/It can’t bе my fault/This street goes both ways/Let a giver takе/You’re all mine, boy.” In this sense, Doja channels a time when women were only really just coming into their own as independent people capable not only of being seen as a man’s “equal” (which really isn’t hard to do considering how subpar most men are), but being able to “claim” in the same way—or so one would have liked to believe—without incurring as much judgment as they would have in the past. And in the 80s, it was not so “past” at all, considering the fact that most women couldn’t even open their own bank accounts in the U.S. until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. Considering that Doja is very much the type of woman who needs to have her own bag, the 80s are probably about as far back in time as she would be willing to go (not to mention the fact that a Black woman further back than the 80s didn’t have much in the way of rights either).
To be sure, it wouldn’t have been half as easy for a woman to simply command, “Take Me Dancing,” as both Doja and SZA do on the song of the same name. Teaming up yet again after the stratospheric success of “Kiss Me More” (which even broke Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine” record for the “longest-running all-female Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100”), SZA commences the track with the repetition of the demand, “Baby, take me dancing tonight.”
Once she makes her desires known, Doja then comes in with the chorus, “You’re so raw, boy, and you’re so romantic/When you fuck me right and then you take me dancing/It gets lonely out here in this big old mansion/In these hills cooped up, boy, can you take me dancing?” Clearly speaking from the perspective of someone who lives in L.A. (with Doja herself being a native), it’s almost as if Doja is intending to channel Norma Desmond if she were living in the 80s instead of the 50s.
While not as lyrically varied as “Kiss Me More,” “Take Me Dancing” is just as “boppable,” and surely worthy of a music video that finds Doja and SZA hitting the clubs of Los Angeles through an 80s lens (which must surely be less derivative than the very Britney concept they “came up with” for the “Kiss Me More” video). Maybe even one with a Maxxxine-inspired slant.
On “Lipstain,” Doja actually says she doesn’t wanna dance. Well, that is, metaphorically speaking, beginning the song with the declaration, “I don’t wanna dance around it/Talkin’ ‘bout our love is easy.” So easy that it even makes her “speak in tongues”—a.k.a. French (e.g., “Tu es ma vie et mon tout/Et tout le monde le sait” and “Laisse-moi embrasser ton cou”). And why shouldn’t she? Considering that Vie is named in honor of the French word for “life,” of which Doja remarked to CBS Sunday Morning, “That means life and I feel like you can’t have life without love.” “Vie” not only means “life” in French, as in, “tu es ma vie,” but it also derives from the Roman numeral V, and Doja wanting to reference this being her fifth record. One that shows a side of her that perhaps wasn’t as noticeable before. The romantic side (after all, that doesn’t come across in such previous lyrics as, “If she ain’t got a butt/Nah, fuck it, get into it, yuh”). Which is why Doja was prompted to explain of the consistent theme, “This album is very much about love in a way that reflects how I want it to be in the future—my hope, my hopefulness. What I hope it could be. Because I remember there was a time when people were talking about wanting to be with each other, and it seems to have gotten a bit more vapid and just sort of like, not real… Not loving, not romantic.”
But it is “romantic,” in its retro way, to want to “mark your man” (as Peggy Olson would call it) with a bit of lipstick on his collar…and elsewhere. Or, as Doja calls it, a “lipstain.” This said when she sings, “Kiss you on the neck on purpose/So they know my favorite lipstain.” The “they” being other women that might try to “holla.” A fear that prompts Doja to note, “We gotta mark our territory for them dogs, girl.” That’s certainly how Britney felt on “Perfume” when she used the eponymous beauty product to talk about marking her own territory via the lyrics, “And while I wait, I put on my perfume/Yeah, I want it all over you/I’m gonna mark my territory.” For Doja, though, lipstick will suffice.
And, talking of Britney, Doja very much gives off 00s-era Britney energy on the lyrics for “Silly! Fun!” (a song that matches the playful exclamations in its title) when she sings (while oozing pure exuberance), “Wouldn’t it be fun if we went to a party?/Wouldn’t it be fun to fall deep for somebody?/I know it could be a blast to just pop out a baby/And we’re so very silly getting married in Vegas.” Spears did all of those things and then some in the 00s, but Doja wants to “make it 80s” with her musical spin on such a narrative (one that she calls her homage to lovebombing). And yes, “Silly! Fun!” definitely offers the kind of jubilance-inducement one would expect of such a title, practically begging its listeners to snort cocaine to this soundtrack. It also echoes the theme of “Stranger,” reiterating the idea that Doja has found someone to match her freak, so to speak (and to quote a Tinashe song rather than a Doja one)—and that she’s all the better/happier for it. As made further apparent when she gushes, “You’re my person, this my first time, I’m in love/Those men were practice in my past.”
On “Acts of Service,” this talk of finding “my person” continues immediately, with Doja asking the question, “Would it mean that I found my person/When the language is acts of service?” The “language” she’s referring to obviously being “love language,” of which there are five categories: acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts and physical touch (all five have Vie vinyl variants named in their honor). And so, if Doja can find that “special someone” who speaks her language, in addition to embodying some of the other ones, then, “Please, this is an achievement.”
The slow tempo and “boudoir-ready” sound, co-produced by Fallen, Stavros and Kurtis McKenzie, is yet another example of the Janet Jackson inspiration on the album. Though, of course, the rapped portions of the song are all strictly Doja, especially when she says, “Yeah, said I/I just deleted Raya/That must mean that I’m your provider/That just mean I’ma be your rider.” Something about this verse feeling like a nod to the Joseph Quinn drama that happened earlier this year, with some outlets reporting that Quinn was “caught” on the dating app for “posh” people (a.k.a. celebrities [or even just “influencers”]) while still “with” Doja (much like David Harbour when he was married to Lily Allen). Either way, it’s a pointed remark. Perhaps the kind that would later prompt Doja to “Make It Up” to her love with an apology. This song having the kind of sound that makes one think of Prince taking a bubble bath (or maybe even think of Vivian Ward [Julia Roberts] taking a bubble bath while listening to Prince).
To that point, Doja asks her lover in the second verse, “Can I run your shower?/Can I fill the tub?” So it is that Doja obviously wants to keep the acts of service love language going. And, in a certain sense, “Make It Up” also has shades (no pun intended) of Ariana Grande’s “make up,” a song from thank u, next about, what else, make up sex as Grande urges, “And I love it when we make up/Go ‘head, ruin my makeup” (so yeah, it’s sort of like 50 Cent rhyming “nympho” with “nympho”). In a similar fashion, complete with using the repetition of the same word, Doja sings, “If we make love/Would I make it up to you?” In other words, would it make this person, er, come around “One More Time.”
While Daft Punk might already have a signature song called this, Doja throws her own hat into the “One More Time” ring. Even though she, too, mostly just repeats that phrase for the chorus. Even so, the song explores the struggle of being vulnerable, especially as it pertains to allowing oneself to fall in love. Awash in the sound of “80s electric guitar,” Doja remarks, “It’s never easy/We’re willingly uncomfortable/I want you to teach me/We’re both feeling unlovable/We gotta learn to unlearn it/It’s gotta hurt if we’re burning/When we get closer, I curse it/Breaking the cycle, I know I deserve it.” In other words, she deserves to be “Happy.”
The Marvin Gaye-esque opening of said song, the penultimate track on Vie, inevitably leads to Doja speaking more rudimentary French (as she did on “Lipstain”), incorporating the repetition of the command, “Brise/Mon coeur/Encore/Ce soir” (meaning, “Break/My heart/Again/Tonight”), in between asking, “Are you happy?/Who would get mad at you/Doing what you wanna do?” A query that sounds, in its way, like MARINA asking, “Are you satisfied/With an average life?” (on a side note: MARINA also has a song called “Happy” on Froot). But the answer to that question is, patently, Doja, who expresses being plenty mad when she says, “TLC, I saw, I creeped/She’s in our bed, I bought the sheets.” This pop culture reference not being 80s at all, but peak 90s. Alas, Doja can’t keep it entirely “of the time” she’s emulating, putting her own contemporary spin on the lyrics while borrowing mostly from the sound of the Decade of Excess. Which she, like many others, wants to “Come Back.”
For this grand finale, Doja selected Antonoff as the sole producer of the song (the only other one on Vie that he produced on his own being “AAAHH Men!”). And for this big responsibility, Antonoff seemed to riff off Doja’s tone of voice to fully exude an all-out Wilson Phillips sound. To be sure, “Come Back” has a very inspirational sound in the spirit of said band (particularly their best-known hit, “Hold On”). But just because it sounds that way doesn’t mean Doja is saying things intended in that spirit. For when she sings the chorus, “Changin’ the way that you act to me/Can’t switch the tone while I’m ‘bout to leave/I worked it down till the atrophy/You missed the mark and her majesty/Beggin’ me, ‘Baby, come back to me,’” it’s evident that Doja has reached her threshold on giving love—or at least this particular love—a chance.
In this regard, “Come Back” is like Doja’s version of “Goodbye”—the Sabrina Carpenter track that concludes Man’s Best Friend (and yes, Antonoff co-wrote and co-produced that song, too). For, like Carpenter, Doja is sending a big kiss-off message to the person who thought that she would always be around/come running at the drop of hat. In both songs, each woman emphasizes that this man’s sudden desire to “come back” to the relationship and (potentially) “be better” is a classic case of too little, too late. Which is exactly why Doja pronounces, “It turned you on when I told you off/I’m pleased I ain’t the bitch you was hopin’ for/If we keep this up, and you hold my doors/And you take my bag, and you hold me more/I don’t think that would make up for the hope I lost.”
Much like the collective hope that was lost during the Decade of Excess itself, with Ronald Reagan ramping up the concept of neoliberalism (with his counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, also doing the same “across the pond”) through Reaganomics. A so-called philosophy/set of policies that served only to further dash the dreams and livelihood of the average American. Turning the U.S. into an even greater cultural wasteland that wouldn’t deign to fund the arts in general, let alone music education. Even so, compared to now, there’s no denying the 80s had a lot more luster. A far greater sense of hope and aspiration.
To boot, in the spirit of songs from “that time,” Doja even dares to challenge her usual audience by making tracks that last well over three minutes in most cases. Which is a tall ask of a generation that’s grown accustomed to mostly only having the focus for a song that’s about two minutes, if that. So perhaps her goal really is to fully transport listeners back to that time, and remind them that while time travel might not be possible (as was “promised” in Back to the Future), the “DeLorean” that people will have to settle for in 2025 is Vie.
Genna Rivieccio
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