Album Review: Doja Cat's "Vie"
Cohesive or Repetitive? Doja's new album thrives on dance floor energy but falls flat in emotional honestly
Doja Cat’s fifth studio album, Vie, is fun, but a little too cohesive for its own good. The 1980s-inspired record pairs seamlessly with her rap-pop hybrid, but the downside is that many tracks blur together. It’s clever lyrically, but rarely vulnerable, making the listening experience feel more like surface-level style lacking substance. Some of the more upbeat, dance-leaning songs will remain in my rotation, while others I’ll probably forget exist.
“Jealous Type” was the perfect lead single—catchy, dynamic, and promising a range that the album as a whole doesn’t consistently deliver. Instead, Vie presents one sleek mood and stays there. When it works, it’s a party. When it doesn’t, the redundancy dulls the impact.
The Strengths:
The energetic tracks are the album’s strength —catchy, quick-witted lyrics and sticky beats. “Cards” and “Stranger” lean into shimmering ‘80s synths, showing off Doja’s pen, where “Take Me Dancing,” boosted by SZA’s presence, has been singled out by Riff for its chemistry—SZA grounds the song while Doja keeps it light on its feet, making it one of the album’s most replayable songs. “Silly! Fun!” earns its title, toggling between earnest hooks and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, taking a page out of the Sabrina Carpenter playbook. “One More Time” delivers a clean, hook-heavy closer that captures why Doja thrives in uptempo spaces: the tracks may not reinvent her formula, but they keep her quirky persona front and center. These moments prove that when she leans into maximalist, dance-ready pop, she’s untouchable.
The Weaknesses:
The slower tracks like “Couples Therapy,” “Acts of Service,” “All Mine,” “Make It Up” are the real drag. Instead of grounding the record with intimacy and vulnerability, they stall it. Without the gloss that props up the uptempo songs, the surface-level writing is exposed
Critics’ sentiment is split: Slant argued that Vie is more style than substance, too repetitive to make a lasting impact and Elle pointed out that Doja’s “sing-rap-sing” structure becomes formulaic, causing tracks to blend together. And even positive reviews from outlets like WTOP admitted the slower tracks were the weakest links. These reviews echo my main critique: cohesion that begins to veer into monotony.
Meanwhile, The Guardian praises Doja’s balance of “bubbly pop and her trademark provocative lyricism,” calling Vie a “nuanced evolution,” and Variety frames Vie as a statement that Doja doesn’t need to stay in one lane: that she can stretch between genres and still retain identity — fair!
The Verdict
Despite mixed reviews, album has performed well so far, garnering 13 million streams on Spotify on day one with six tracks charting on the app.
Vie is a reminder that Doja Cat can command the pop spotlight at will, even when the material doesn’t always rise above the aesthetic. It’s not her boldest or most surprising record, but it shows her mastery of mood. The highs are bright and fun, the lows are forgettable, but the overall vibe is polished enough to keep her firmly in the conversation.