After months of trolling fans on Twitter about the direction of her new era, Doja Cat has returned with “Attention”, our first glimpse of the US megastar’s upcoming album. The track, which opens with a sultry, Spanish guitar, lyrically references the musician’s time in the spotlight since 2021 album Planet Her fast-tracked her already ascendent star to an astronomical level of fame.
In the accompanying music video, Doja pulls up to an LA sidewalk filled with hordes of screaming fans then proceeds to walk down it, dodging menacing figures in melted-flesh face masks. In another scene, a brief image of the musician nude and covered in what seems to be blood flashes across the screen. By the end of the trippy, kaleidoscopic clip, Doja walks defiantly across a closed-off bridge, flashes of fireworks exploding around her. The video was directed by Tanu Muiño, who’s previously shot videos for Harry Styles, Normani and Cardi B, Lil Nas X and The Weeknd.
“Attention” is Doja’s first track as lead artist since 2022’s Elvis soundtrack single “Vegas”, and since then she’s featured on a remix to SZA’s “Kill Bill” and also spent the last few months trolling her fans on Twitter. In a series of now deleted tweets, the musician claimed in March 2023 that her new album would be called ‘Hellmouth’, and in April expressed that there would be “no more pop” songs because “the majority of my rap verses are mid and corny”. By May, the album title had changed to ‘First Of All’, and the musician also tweeted that her last two albums, Hot Pink and Planet Her, “were cash-grabs and yall fell for it.” Since then, in an interview with Insider on May 26, Doja has stated that she “finally [has] a title” for the album, but it’s “not ‘First Of All’.” We can hardly keep up.
Revisit our Winter 2022 cover interview with the pop chameleon, who reflects on her many reinventions and a life lived under a microscope.
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