Demons
Doja Cat
The track is menacing in the most aesthetically deliberate way — industrial percussion, low-register vocal processing, a guitar tone that sounds like it's been run through every effect pedal simultaneously and then distilled into something specifically dark. Doja Cat here is operating in a completely different register than her radio persona, and the effect is disorienting in the best way. The production on *Scarlet* leans into metal and rock textures throughout, but this track specifically feels like a night drive through a tunnel that keeps going. Her vocal performance is controlled menace — there's nothing reckless about it; the darkness is curated and intelligent. The lyrical territory involves the parts of oneself that feel impossible to confess publicly, the internal contradictions that complicate a persona built for consumption. There's also something performatively transgressive happening, an artist using the iconography of darkness to communicate both authenticity and a certain exhaustion with being legible. The song makes the most sense if you've ever felt that the version of you the world accepts and the version of you that exists privately are genuinely incompatible. Listen to it alone. Preferably with the lights down.
medium
2020s
dark, industrial, dense
American pop/metal crossover
Pop, Rock. Dark Pop / Industrial. menacing, anxious. Holds at a steady controlled menace from the first note, deepening into a meditation on irreconcilable private contradictions.. energy 8. medium. danceability 5. valence 2. vocals: controlled female, low-register processed, curated menace, precise. production: industrial percussion, heavily effected distorted guitar, low-register vocal processing, dense layers. texture: dark, industrial, dense. acousticness 1. era: 2020s. American pop/metal crossover. Alone at night with the lights down when you want to sit with the version of yourself that doesn't make it into public.