Spooky season lasting a little longer than anticipated…

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[4.75]Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Doja Cat’s music and Doja Cat’s public image are in this weird inverse dynamic where the more outré and provocative she gets the more boring her work gets. This has no distinguishing features at all, an expensive sample wrapped around a platonic solid. For an artist that, at her best, could be either an exquisite pop-rap irritant or an effortlessly charming hook machine, here she seemingly intentionally choses to be neither. At this point, she’s an empty retread of her empty retreads.
[3]

Michelle Myers: Massive, obvious samples like this are actually quite bold if you consider how easy they are to do poorly. Helps that the selection isn’t arbitrary. “Paint the Town Red” channels the same refined resentment that Dionne Warwick mastered in the ’60s. The raps are flowy and villainous with some genuinely weird phrasing. Euch!
[7]

Jackie Powell: I couldn’t be more glad that Dionne Warwick, an underrated legacy artist, once again gets her mainstream due. First she was the queen of Twitter before Elon Musk turned it into a dumpster fire, second she was impersonated by Ego Nwodim on SNL, and now she’s been included in a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit. Unfortunately “Walk On By” didn’t have a random revival cover, but rather Doja Cat took Warwick’s hook followed by the two-bar trumpet riff that follows it to serve as the heart and soul of her diss track “Paint the Town Red.” Warwick’s original song is about getting over heartbreak, but Doja Cat uses Warwick’s vulnerable hook as a chiller means to say buzz off. That’s why “Paint the Town Red” feels lyrically out of place. Doja is trying to emulate an I-don’t-give-a-fuck type of attitude alongside one of the more vulnerable hooks of the 1960s. That contrast leads me to believe that Doja Cat actually does care about the droves of people on the internet that have a problem with her. Using the phrase “walk on by” to dispel haters might make sense initially, but writers Burt Bacharach and Hal David intended for it to be much more introspective and about personal accountability. That doesn’t happen in “Paint the Town Red.”
[5]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Every time I hear this song, I immediately cue up its slowed and reverb remix, and then I am at peace. I’m going to avoid engaging in Doja Discourse (you hate your old music and your fans, okay), but for something that’s supposed to be a demonic clapback, this ends up feeling a little too bouncy and endearing. The snaps in the percussion leave the trumpet sample sounding oddly jaunty. Even the title is quaint, more “pleasant carousing” than scaring the haters into submission. (Unless the implication is she’s painting the town red WITH BLOOD, but that’s just funny.) The one element that is genuinely intimidating is the vocal harmonies, and I think what keeps dragging me back to the slowed and reverb remixes is the extra depth and menace they gain.
[6]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Tik Tok background music that dissipates into invisible wisps of smoke when it’s asked to foster any IRL connection.
[3]

Tim de Reuse: I do not like Doja Cat. There’s a featheriness in her aesthetic that itches at me. At high enough energies her delivery is like being caught on the kiddie coaster at the fair malfunctioning at sixty miles an hour. I [1]’ed her breakout hits on this very site back in the day. I hate fun; My poptimist card has long lapsed; I’m never here to have a good time. But here, there’s a heaviness to her delivery. No longer failing to seduce, now proudly misanthropic, her style — finally, finally! — clicks into place, immune to my curmudgeonly nitpicks. If I dug in, I might find insincerity, awkward rhymes, lazy lyrics, but that’s not a fight I can win. She is not here for me to have a good time. Finally, we agree on something.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Doja Cat deciding to embrace her super serious Little Brother side proves that some folks need to stop running from liking browbeating purist rap. We’ve been doing it for years now, and whenever this happens. it’s dispiriting to the actual true schoolers who won’t switch up and chose to continue making purist rap and the cynicism by certain pop rappers who wish to escape the scrutiny and hype caused by their own actions and sharpen their hooks, pick more important and complimentary beats, get makeovers, then chafe at the restrictions and try to become serious without undertaking the necessary effort to make oneself — at this point, the writer realized he was in this picture and ragequit.
[6]

Ian Mathers: An earworm of a chorus deployed over a lovely use of the Warwick “Walk on By” and maybe the only song I’ve heard to make me think of both Kendrick and “212,” but ultimately with this kind of power move it comes down to: when she starts off with “bitch, I said what I said,” does it signify? I discounted this one on first listen and then came back a few days later and rewrote this blurb after I couldn’t get it out of my head, so you tell me.
[8]

Oliver Maier: Boring, mostly because Doja is entertaining as a rapper when she’s being a weird little sex gremlin, not brandishing a huge inexplicable chip on her shoulder about being one of the most successful musicians on the planet. Even the touches of whimsy — like the breathy, higher register she brings out on the god-awful chorus — feel perfunctory, like they’re only there to remind you who you’re listening to. More whole lotta nothing than whole lotta red.
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Brad Shoup: A jaw-dropping heel display here, a weapons-grade blister agent: like prime Eminem without the self-thinkpiecing. She makes one feeble attempt to sort the fans from the freaks–otherwise, it’s omnidirectional menace. The jokes are great; the image she inhabits is too. To sound famous, Doja Cat risks looking ridiculous (“ain’t no sign I can’t smoke here”), getting so deep into her lore I’m honestly surprised she didn’t threaten to show feet. The sophistipop sample is big and obvious, but she doesn’t interact with it like on “Vegas”. In fact, listen hard enough and Warwick becomes a beleaguered member of Doja Cat’s team, pleading with her to drop it already.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: At the risk of engaging in the sort of parasocial shit Doja Cat openly despises, including on this song: What demon lord are we talking here? Lamashtu? Oublivae? What is the Doja Cat lore? (Besides an Internet history of far-right chat rooms and a present history of working with Dr. Luke. Just pretend the “Walk on By” sample is siphoning more of the proceeds to Burt Bacharach than it probably actually is.)
[7]

Michael Hong: Explained Doja Cat lore to my friend under the dim lighting of a restaurant, from “she was showing feet! in the racial chatroom!” to her berating her fans for acting like they know her. Knowing that, it’s incredible how little bite, or anything resembling weirdness, her music has.
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Taylor Alatorre: For most people under the age of 60, “paint the town red” is not a phrase that immediately calls forth any specific, tangible emotions or experiences, if indeed it ever did. That doesn’t mean it can’t be used as the basis for a contemporary song, but it should ideally be expanded upon, with some sturdier reference points brought in to help with the heavy lifting, rather than left to fend for itself in an ocean of tetchy self-justifications. Name-drop Carti or Trippie, claim a tenuous connection to the Bloods if you have to, just do something. Maybe the Dionne Warwick nod is meant to do that — an old-timey phrase paired with an old-timey tune — but I doubt it. If that were the case, they probably would’ve done something with the sample beyond giving it the most basic Pro Tools treatment imaginable.
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Aaron Bergstrom: It sure doesn’t take long for that sample to go from pleasantly hypnotic to painfully tedious, which is a problem since it’s the most interesting part of the song.
[3]

Leah Isobel: This year, Kim Petras released an album called Problématique, a title that petulantly nods to her association with Dr. Luke and the aura of controversy that has consequently clung to her work. Earlier that week, “Paint The Town Red” hit number one. While Doja’s association with Luke hasn’t impacted her career in precisely the same way as it has Kim’s, his presence has undoubtedly shaped the discourse around her. “Paint The Town Red,” and the whole Scarlet album cycle, demonstrates how that discourse has, in turn, shaped Doja right back. The needling repetition of the line “Bitch, I said what I said” has big I’m-not-bothered-you’re-bothered energy, turning the laid-back bounce of the sample into something testy and passive-aggressive; the post-chorus slide into the third person is like she’s psyching herself up, trying to summon her persona in order to escape her own emotions. I’m very sympathetic to Doja — her work is admirably honest about how dehumanizing it is to be a woman who makes pop. This feels more and more vital as the industry contracts around the demands of major labels, who have a habit of hiring dudes like Luke to flatten out creative and talented women. In this light, Doja’s edgelord heel turn isn’t surprising; it’s just sad, and predictable.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Becomes tiresome with every passing minute. Everyone who complained about TikTok songs being 90 seconds was wrong.
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