Doja Cat Review – Ignore the headlines, she’s a pop provocateur at the top of her game | Doja Cat

WWhen Doja Cat’s Ma Vie world tour kicked off in Auckland last week, some fans immediately complained — not about her (authentic) sound or her (fiercely unconventional) band, but about the lack of costume changes. This is the way of modern pop stardom: the spectacle, not the music, is what sends phones flying into the air, with footage that is then captured on TikTok and Instagram.

Doja Cat has been singing about this banality for years — “You follow me, but you don’t really care about the music,” she said in her 2023 song “Attention” — and in Oakland, she’s having none of it. “I’m not your fucking monkey, I move at my own pace and break my back out there every night so you can keep your bullshit opinion to yourself,” she wrote on X after the show. “You are not the artist, you are the observer.”

Doja Cat’s prick made good headlines – the BBC covered her sulking in Auckland, while seemingly every Australian newspaper blasted her 15-minute appearance at a Melbourne club earlier this week, which ended abruptly after three songs (to be fair, she was supposed to be on vocal rest due to a sore throat). All of this could paint a picture of a pop star hating her fans, which is simply not true; Doja Cat likes fighting online the most. As she once told Variety: “It’s fun for me. I’m a very messy bitch.”

And she’s really breaking her back there. On Tuesday night at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena, she stalked and writhed around the stage for nearly two hours. She’s a rare performer who can sing as well as she can rap live, able to go from dreamy love song to devilish scream on a dime.

There may be no costume changes but there are fireworks, hellish flames and one very daring outfit: a messy pink wig, a high-cut leopard-print bodysuit, and half a face of dramatic makeup, like a clown who had to rush to a Duran Duran concert. Her latest album, Vie, is heavily inspired by the ’80s and from the opening concert cards, you can not only hear the inspirations of the era, but you can see them – the playful theatricality of Madonna and Prince, the provocative gravitas of Janet Jackson, and when she pulls her most devilish faces, licking the mic stand and biting one of her fake nails to throw at the audience, even the shadow of Ozzy Osbourne. (She was going to front a great metal band.)

Much like her hero Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat is a consummate and dedicated performer: After a triumphant, exhilarating rendition of Paint the Town Red, she turns around and grabs her underwear by the butt with a cheeky flick of her leg. Occasionally, certain syllables get lost in the wall of sound, but whether it’s her throat, the microphone, the arena speakers, or the audience drowning her out, who knows — and it doesn’t have much impact when everyone is singing along.

Vie sounds best live, with a fantastically tight band heavy on the brass, throbbing bass and even the guitar; “Gorgeous,” which could have been a Madonna song 40 years ago or a George Michael song in another life, is a song that stands out with its sax solo. It really helps the band stand out with the new songs – One More Time, Take Me Dancing, Aaahh Men! And the closer is A Jealous Kind, Song of the Summer of 2025 – although all the older songs (Wet Vagina, Ain’t Shit, Boss Bitch) benefit from funky arrangements as well.

For nearly two hours, each song is answered by Doja Cat word for word, concluding with a sweet thank you, and laughing in obvious delight. Anyone who would complain after a show like this needs to do more than just get their eyes and ears checked.