"Doja Cat's new album is titled Vie French for life and the original artwork (changed at the last minute) features the 29-year-old Angeleno surrounded by roses, ever the picture of congeniality. Doja has become known, in recent years, as mainstream pop's master agitator: she tells her superfans to get off your phone, get a job and help your parents with the house, disavows her own hits before they've even left the upper echelons of the charts"
"It's not exactly that: Doja's fifth album does find her returning to the sugary, aerodynamic well of her 2019 LP Hot Pink and 2021's Planet Her. This time around, it feels as if she and producer Jack Antonoff have found a more comfortable middle ground between the gloss of that world, which she's criticised over and over again, and the desires of the brilliantly snarky fire-starter who tore her way through Scarlet."
"Hearing the push-and-pull between those sides of Doja is enormous fun. AAAHH MEN! is like a sinister take on Chic's Le Freak, its blown-out, sleazy strut a perfect soundtrack for Doja's conflicted internal monologue: do I want to take a guy home for sex, or just to lambast him? It's hard to tell which she's leaning towards: I have too much tolerance / You ugly and fine as shit"
Vie returns Doja Cat to a tension between glossy pop and antagonistic rap. The album title means 'life' and initial artwork showed her amid roses. The lead single 'Jealous Type' channels slick, cinematic 1980s pop, while producer Jack Antonoff helps bridge past pop albums Hot Pink and Planet Her with the abrasive energy of 2023's Scarlet. Tracks shift between seductive sweetness and prickly aggression, exemplified by 'AAAHH MEN!' which evokes Chic's 'Le Freak' with a sleazy strut and lyrics that toggle between desire and dismissal. The record balances theatrical glamour and edgy provocation.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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