Doja Cat’s song Woman was released on October 1st of 2021. So it will have its one year song anniversary in a few days. The song is more about divine femininity and simply being a woman in general in today’s society. The song was released at a time when women are becoming predominantly powerful in many places around the world. In politics, education, as well as all of media. We have become the one thing that everyone talks about. Doja Cat’s song was the cherry on top as well as the many other artists and songs that talk about women empowerment and women accomplishments. One of the greatest example during that year that would have been an inspiration to the song was of Kamala Harris becoming the first woman and woman of color to become the vice president of the United States of America like the The New York Times exclaims. The song mentions, “I mean I could be the leader, head of all the states.” Just like Kamala Harris. This links to her song because, like mentioned previously, women are becoming powerful by the minute. Society has come to the conclusion that women are the reason why we are all alive on this earth. That without females, where we would we be.
The genre of this song would be r&b and soul. This genre would often influence the way we have listened to the song by the way the song makes us feel first. The song has a “fusion of afro-beats, pop, and r&b with the lyrical theme of divine femininity,” acknowledges Wikipedia. We might hear beats like reggae in the song which will make you move your body softly. I think this is important because it is including race into it. When we think of afro-beats or even Reggae, we might think of race because of exotic places this genre comes from.
The song was written by four people. Doja Cat wrote her own song, with help of Jiddden, Linden Jay, and Aaron Horn. In terms of social critique, the songwriters offer critique throughout their lyrics because it’s how they are promoting this self love within girls. As well as supporting women. To love them. To include them. To view them as a gift. In the lyrics, they include movies like Mean Girls. The song acknowledges, “They wanna see us end up like Regina on Mean Girls.” This was their way of saying how patriarchy always puts women to compete against each other, making a comparison with Regina George on Mean Girls. If you have watched the movie, you can already imagine the hatred, jealousy, and envy she might be thinking about. She also talks about Rihanna saying, “I could be the CEO, just look at Robyn Fenty.” She says this because Rihanna has a multi-million dollar business. She’s black and successful. This song is so self explanatory. It includes every aspect of being a woman.
October 2, 2022 at 3:34 pm
Valery,
This is an interesting discussion of “Woman,” especially when you start getting into the lyrics in the 3rd paragraph, which is showing how Doja Cat considers this song in relation to other media and other artists.
I do, however, wish you had focused with more specificity on the social context of the song. By more specificity I mean, more of a focus on what was happening in the world leading up to the writing of the song (from what I can see it was recorded in May 2021, but I can’t find when it was written). The song comes on the heals of the #metoo movement, however when you write:
“The song was released at a time when women are becoming predominantly powerful in many places around the world. In politics, education, as well as all of media. We have become the one thing that everyone talks about.”
and
“Society has come to the conclusion that women are the reason why we are all alive on this earth”
These kinds of statements are unsubstantiated and vague and as a result the points you are trying to make are lost. It will be important not to make similarly vague assertions in your podcast.
We are living in a time of great contradiction. Yes, women are much more empowered, yet we have a Supreme Court that just gutted women’s rights. Hyper-sexism and vitriol toward women is going berserk on TikTok and other forms of social media, in Incels and other sexism groups vowing to make women subservient to men. It’s sick and twisted and horrific, but that is the context in which the song was released, so we need to address the seeming contradictions of the moment concretely.
Also, be sure to add other features that are important to blogs and blog readers: links whenever having one would make a meaningful connection, images, embedded video and/or audio, and so on.”
Bill