Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023: No. 9 — Doja Cat

Kyle Denis
·6 min read
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For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard is counting down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2023 all this week. At No. 9, we remember the year in Doja Cat — a consistently challenging and successful pop star who rarely makes it easy for her fans, but continues to build one of the most vital and rewarding careers in 2020s pop.

When she entered 2023 with five Grammy nominations – off the back of a Post Malone collab, a late-stage Planet Her single and a hit from the Elvis soundtrack – Doja Cat knew something the rest of us didn’t quite yet get: We’re not getting rid of her anytime soon. After reaching top 40’s zenith with the frothy Planet Her two years prior (the album peaked at No. 2 and spawned five consecutive top 20 hits), Doja Cat spent 2023 setting fire to that pop-forward version of herself – and she still proved to be one of the year’s most dominant pop stars in the process.

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Before Doja attended the Grammys in a black latex gown that signaled a stark tonal and aesthetic shift from the pink and purple hues of Planet Her, she took on Paris Fashion Week while decked out in head-to-toe red body paint and 30,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals – an instantly viral moment that reaffirmed Doja’s singular wielding of fashion in her greater artist project and further proved the irrefutability of her star power. The punk and horror influences in her new wardrobe would soon reverberate through the rest of her 2023 – but, then again, those seeds were truly thrown when she shaved her head last summer:  an aesthetic decision that became a key symbol of the Scarlet era.

Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023:
Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Year: Peso Pluma | Comeback of the Year: Miley Cyrus | No. 10: Drake | No. 8: Bad Bunny | No. 7: Olivia Rodrigo | No. 6: Karol G | No. 5: Morgan Wallen

Doja’s first piece of new music came by way of an April “Kill Bill” remix, the year-defining hit single from Grammy-winning “Kiss Me More” duet partner SZA. Her Eminem-nodding guest verse used the song’s boom-bap-infused beat as a catalyst for Doja’s intentional repositioning as a rapper in the “traditional sense.” Her remix helped push “Kill Bill” to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 – although chart credit evaded her in this case – and primed fans for her new era.

Greatest Pop Stars, Doja Cat
Greatest Pop Stars, Doja Cat
Greatest Pop Stars, Doja Cat
Greatest Pop Stars, Doja Cat

She kicked off the following month at the MET Gala with a purr-fect ensemble inspired by the late Karl Lagerfeld’s pet cat, but that moment quickly gave way to Doja’s first major controversy of the year.

“[Planet Her] and [Hot Pink] were cash-grabs and yall fell for it,” she wrote on Twitter (now X) on May 9. “Now [I] can go disappear somewhere and touch grass with my loved ones on an island while yall weep for mediocre pop.” Ironically, the hits from those albums helped Doja win the songwriter of the year award she accepted from the BMI Pop Awards that same day. After garnering legions of fans thanks to her pristine pop-rap bops, Doja seemed hellbent on obliterating that; large portions of her fan base were incredibly vocal in their objections to Doja’s remarks, but the tirade didn’t derail her year.

“Attention,” the first taste of Scarlet, arrived on Jun. 16, earning a warm reception from critics, who lauded Doja’s focus on deft lyricism and her further exploration of those boom-bap influences. Fans greeted the song with a more middling reception; “Attention” spent just three weeks on the Hot 100 and peaked at No. 31. Doja went a bit quiet after “Attention,” but she came back with an even more contentious tirade the following month. “My fans don’t get to name themselves s–t,” she wrote on Threads. “If you call yourself a ‘Kitten’ or f–king ‘Kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.” Once again intentionally antagonizing her fanbase, Doja found herself embroiled in a controversy that tested consumers’ patience with her, ultimately culminating in nearly 240,000 lost Instagram followers in under a week.

Nonetheless, as she proved with her infamous career-threatening chat room controversy back in 2020, Doja Cat has nine lives – and maybe a few extra. The Grammy-winner quickly turned her fortunes around with “Paint the Town Red,” a bouncy Dionne Warwick-sampling track that became both her highest-debuting solo song and the first hip-hop song to top the Hot 100 in 2023. The song grew into a juggernaut on radio – it’s spent seven weeks atop both Pop and Rhythmic Airplay – and became ubiquitous on TikTok without the help of an over-arching dance challenge or trend, further cementing her as star that moves the culture, not one that happens to be buoyed by one of its myriad waves.  “Paint” topped the Hot 100 the same week Doja stole the MTV Video Music Awards with a three-song medley — “Paint,” “Attention,” and horrorcore-leaning promo single “Demons” — that reminded audiences of her performance prowess and gifted consumers the first look at Doja’s vision for Scarlet in a live setting. At the ceremony, “Attention” picked up a Moonperson – Doja’s fifth – for best art direction.

Although Doja had fully fleshed out her Scarlet alter ego by the VMAs, she was still trying on different titles for the record. (Remember Hellmouth? First of All?) Moreover, the singles were a far cry from the “no more pop” and “French conceptual experimental country/bohemian fusion with the essence of bluegrass” descriptors she (sometimes jokingly) gave to fans. Nonetheless, Scarlet arrived in all of its jazz rap-meets-lo-fi-meets horrorcore glory on Sept. 20. Reviews were favorable, but unimpressive first week numbers (No. 4, 72,000 units earned) signaled that Doja couldn’t quite translate the success of “Paint the Town Red” to its parent LP. Fans were still showing up for her, but they didn’t quite love what she was dishing out, some of which included sporting an ill-received t-shirt featuring alt-right comedian Sam Hyde.

As she did with Planet Her, Doja seems to be playing the long game with Scarlet. Her Ice Spice and Doechii-assisted headlining arena tour has been trekking across the U.S., and “Agora Hills,” an instant Scarlet standout – is already growing into the album’s second major hit, currently sitting at No. 24 on the Hot 100. With Scarlet, which ended 2023 as one of the Billboard staff’s 10 favorite albums of the year, Doja challenged both her fans and pop music at large more than any of her contemporaries. That fearlessness didn’t always pay off, but it did always keep her at the forefront of the conversation –  further cementing her as arguably the most consistent pop star of the 2020s, and one of only four artists to appear on all three Greatest Pop Star top 10 rankings Billboard has done this decade.

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