Doja Cat has always been equal parts mischief and method, a pop-rap chameleon who can make a joke go viral and still land a razor-sharp observation in the same breath. “Gorgeous,” a standout from her fifth studio album Vie, is a perfect example of that double act. On first listen it glides — glossy, seductive and instantly hummable — but linger a little longer and the song unpeels into a sharp commentary on beauty, commerce and the private cost of public glamour.

The song arrived as part of Vie, released on 26 September 2025, and Doja timed the single and its video with the album rollout to underline the record’s retro-pop aesthetic. The track sits comfortably inside the album’s more polished, ‘80s-ad-inflected soundscape, which Doja has leaned into across the project.

What the lyrics do

Lyrically, “Gorgeous” plays with contradiction. Lines such as “It’s a crime to be gorgeous” operate as both celebration and accusation. On one level the refrain is triumphant: beauty is power, cameras and attention confirm that power. At the same time the verses catalogue the small violences that attend modern beauty culture — surgery, laser treatments, the pressure to edit and perform oneself for the phone camera. Doja references specifics that make the picture feel lived-in: before and after pictures, wigs and 4C hair, cosmetic procedures and the social theatre surrounding them. Those details keep the song anchored in lived reality rather than airy aesthetic. The lyrics read as confession and reportage at once.

Doja balances swagger with critique. When she sings “I look like my family, I don’t need to brag,” it sounds like pride, but elsewhere the text admits to the toll of scrutiny: “Pretty hurts, don’t talk to me ’bout Brazilians.” That line gestures at both the commodity of certain beauty standards and the emotional labour invested in conforming to them. The repeated hook — “It’s a crime to be gorgeous” — works like a chorus in an essay, a single sentence that can be read as satire, lament or headline depending on whether the listener feels implicated or empowered.

Production and delivery of Gorgeous

Musically the track favours a bright yet slightly sinister sheen. The arrangement leans into glossy synth textures and a late-night saxophone warmth that evokes the ’80s beauty-ad aesthetic the visuals pursue. Doja’s vocal approach is playful and precise; she alternates between conversational bars and clipped melodic lines, which lets her land both the punchlines and the pathos without losing momentum. The production gives her space to inhabit the narrator fully: sometimes coquettish, sometimes weary, always in control.

There are moments where her phrasing does the heavy lifting. Tiny rhythmical shifts and vocal inflections turn what might read as a catalogue of image anxieties into a lived performance. The song never feels didactic. Instead it gently corrals the listener into noticing how spectacle and selfhood are bound up with one another.

The video and visual framing

Doja released a glossy, deliberately pastiche music video for “Gorgeous,” directed by Bardia Zeinali, that draws heavily from vintage beauty commercials. The video’s palettes, typography and product-shot staging recall the high gloss of 1980s cosmetic advertising, while its cast of established models and performers gives the piece a contemporary runway energy. Publications that reviewed the clip noted the homage to those classic ads and the slick, campy tone the concept produces.

The video also features a cast of high-profile faces from the fashion world and a brief appearance by Doja’s mother, Deborah Elizabeth Sawyer, who is present in the interlude and lends an extra layer of intimacy to the sequence. That familial cameo shifts the narrative slightly. Where the visuals otherwise satirise commodified beauty, the maternal voice moment reads like a reminder of lineage and human complexity behind the spectacle. Several outlets highlighted both the model cameos and the mother cameo as notable production choices.

Cultural reading

What makes “Gorgeous” interesting now is how it captures a particular cultural friction. In an era when aesthetics are currency and social feeds are storefronts, Doja flirts with complicity while also naming costs. The track flips between glamor and exposure, asking whether being beautiful is a crime only because it extracts value from the people who perform it. At the same time Doja refuses to moralise the desire to be admired. She shows us both the toolkit and the toll.

Doja’s choice to place candid details about hair texture and cosmetic procedures into a mainstream pop single is significant. It pulls into the pop conversation the nuanced ways in which race, beauty and body politics intersect. Her mentioning of 4C hair and the toggling of wigs, for instance, is more than stylistic colour. It gestures to specific cultural practices and standards that shape Black women’s relationship to beauty and visibility.

Where the song fits in Doja’s catalogue

“Gorgeous” is a mature evolution for Doja. Earlier hits leaned heavily on novelty or meme culture, but here the novelty is less important than construction. The track sits beside other songs on Vie that revisit and rework retro pop conventions while keeping Doja’s lyrical candour. It is pop that knows how to be clever and still land commercially, a balance she has been refining since the crossover success of her previous records. The single and its video push her further into the space between mainstream spectacle and pointed social commentary.

Final thoughts

“Gorgeous” works because it is both fun and uneasy. It will play on playlists and at get-togethers, but it also makes you think about why we commodify beauty and how we, willingly or not, participate in the system. Doja Cat has given us a song that entertains while holding up a mirror, and that is no small achievement for pop music in 2025.

Join the conversation

Which line from “Gorgeous” landed for you: the celebratory hook or the sharp catalogue of beauty pressures? Tell us in the comments and explain why. Do you read the song as satire, confession, or both?