With her new album, Vie, Doja Cat brings us a vaporware-inflected ’80s phantasmagoria — a refraction of the Reagan era where AHS: 1984 meets Taylor Swift’s 1989. And like 1989, Vie has that Easter-egg, tabloid-adjacent energy. Doja is singing about relationships, or at the very least about sex. It doesn’t take a Swiftie-level mathematician to add it up: Doja Cat + situationships + the ’80s = songs about Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn.
Doja and Quinn’s romance played out in the tabloids. The outspoken rapper DM’d Quinn’s co-star Noah Schnapp to ask him to hook them up in 2022, only for Schnapp to blow up her spot on social media and accidentally start a discourse so weird you might not have realized she and Quinn did link up around August 2024, only for the romance to seemingly fizzle within a year. Pop stars have made more music with less relationship (see again: Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department primarily being about her brief time with Matty Healy in between Joe Alwyn and future husband Travis Kelce). In a New York Times story, Doja said she wanted to use her lyrics to explore “not only my own sexuality, but his,” without specifying who “his” might be referring to. So, below, a bunch of wild speculation that it might just be about Johnny Storm.
“Cards”
Hey there stranger
Take you where you want
You could say where stranger
If you play fair stranger
It’s all you could eat while I lay there stranger
Girls turned on by danger
I’m turned on when he run that bank up
He’s turned on when I fill this tank up
Look, we’re not rocket scientists here. She calls him “stranger” because he’s on Stranger Things. And they were turned on by each other’s professional success. Many such cases.
“AAAHH MEN!”
HE GOT THE TOM FORD DOWN YES BUT DO HE SUIT ME
JUST STEAMROLL PAST IF HE CANT EAT COOCHIE
We don’t want to cast aspersions on Joseph Quinn, that he follows the DJ Khaled school of non-reciprocity, but he does wear a lot of Tom Ford at events. (The official lyrics are written in all caps and that just feels right.)
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“Gorgeous”
If they wasn’t grillin’ before
They gon’ be really mad when we hit the floor
It’s a crime to be gorgeous
Between you and a million phones
They takin’ pictures like we hitting a pose
As previously discussed, the Doja/Quinn relationship was the most papped coupling of either star’s career. The pair was often spotted around London hipster enclave Camden. They were also seen leaving the Sunset Tower after Quinn’s Warfare premiere in April of last year.
“All Mine”
He want me and I want him
If you believe in manifestation this make perfect sense
Because I do the things these bitches think of but they don’t don’t don’t don’t do
If I dream if I think big I can gogogogogo
No fantasy I’ll be his queen and we’ll live
Sososososo happily ever after
This whole song honestly feels like a victory lap about tweeting that someone is hot and then actually dating them. She literally started a manifestation trend. Congrats!
“Stranger”
And I know you’re in my life cuz everything that is alive’s connected
And I believe the weirdest ones survive
You’re a trip to them and a vacation to me
And God knows you could be stranger than me so
Kiss me like your mirror
Eye me like a queer
Cuz I know you wont freak me out
Again, the song is called “Stranger.” It doesn’t take a murder board to figure out. Does “Kiss me like your mirror / Eye me like a queer” refer to the strong Steddie slash fandom? What about “the weirdest survive”? Is Doja hoping for a season-five Back From the Dead moment for Quinn? She also mentions its intended recipient is five-ten, Quinn’s reported height on IMDb.
“Acts of Service”
Would it mean that I found my person
When the language is acts of service
Baby, how do I know for certain
Does a key to your flat mean girlfriend
“Flat” is what British people call an apartment, and Quinn is British. Fight me if you disagree! This is the headiest, most in-love song on the album. Whether it’s about Quinn or a different U.K.-based paramour, it’s selling the full The Holiday experience. And we will be streaming.
