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Song Review: 'Say so' By Doja Cat is the Worst Song of the Year

I have not actively disliked a song this much since I was first introduced the Polka.

By Sean PatrickPublished 4 years ago 5 min read
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Why do I hate this so much? That’s what this review will attempt to uncover. What is it that makes me utterly loathe Doja Cat’s Say So? Even when I reviewed Toosie Slide by Drake I didn’t actively wretch while listening to it. That’s just a bad song. Say So transcends being merely bad into a realm of awful that I am not sure I have experienced before. The lyrics are incomprehensible, the beat turns disco into a death march and that rap break! My God, that rap break. The horror… The horror.

We open with some soft disco guitar which is rather bland until you realize that the producers have merely lifted Chic’s Good Times and slightly slowed the pitch. That’s right, if you think you like Say So, you’re actually enjoying Good Times by Chic and someone is breathily mumbling about sex over the top of Nile Rogers’ remarkable masterpiece. That beat is phenomenal but Say So bastardizes it and makes it somehow completely wretched.

I try not to write reviews like this. Honestly, I want to give everything a chance. My personal mid-life crisis is centered on trying to remain connected to modern pop music. That means being open minded and trying to view every song through a lens that is purely musical and fair. When I write a review like this one where I am so negative, I feel incredibly old and desperately out of touch.

But, I have to be honest, I haven’t disliked a song this much in some time. There is nothing I enjoy about Say So. When Doja Cat isn’t singing in a breathy auto-tune so muddled that the lyrics all run together, she’s rapping in a fashion that can only be described by me as shrill and unpleasant.

Say So, on top of being actively unpleasant is also incredibly boring. There is incredibly little to the song. I’ve never heard a chorus last so long and repeated so many times in a single song and say so, so, very, very little. Look for yourself, this is the actual chorus that repeats 20 or 30 times over the 8 hour length of this song abysmal song…

“Day to night to morning, keep with me in the moment

I'd let you had I known it, why don't you say so?

Didn't even notice, no punches left to roll with

You got to keep me focused, you want it, say so

Day to night to morning, keep with me in the moment

I'd let you had I known it, why don't you say so?

Didn't even notice, no punches left to roll with

You got to keep me focused, you want it, say so”

Wikipedia, and critics who are a great deal more courteous than myself, tell me that the point of Say So is Doja Cat telling a man to act on his flirting. She’s becoming bored of his constant attention and lack of follow through. That’s a perfectly fine theme to center a song around. But there are five repetitions of that lengthy chorus that surround two verses, one sung in a fashion that cannot be understood without having the lyrics in front of you.

Doja Cat’s singing voice is what I will hear on a loop in the infernal afterlife. The auto-tuned breathiness of her delivery has a lifeless, zombie quality, as if a failed disco diva had died and been forced to relive the same song for eternity and she’s grown weary of the song. There is no energy to her delivery, there is a void where charisma should be. To pull off a song this derivative and crass, you need a personality ala Nicki Minaj and Doja Cat is no Nicki.

I mentioned that the song is crass and needlessly so. Doja Cat has crafted a stultifyingly traditional pop song and mixed it with hip hop lyrics completely at odds with the vibe of the small portion of Good Times by Chic that is dragged and tortured throughout Say So. Where Good Times is lovely and inviting, Say So is almost misanthropic in its confrontational sexuality. I am not a prude, I am happy to hear sexually aggressive women owning their aggressiveness, but Doja Cat lacks the attitude to make that sound appealing.

I might be afraid of Nicki Minaj’s aggressive sexuality but I still want to sleep with her. She’s terrifying in a very exciting way. Doja Cat sounds like someone who just wants to get sex over with. The constant attention of this man is a bother to her and she wants him to act on his desire so she can roll over and go to bed. Where there is danger in Nicki Minaj, there is supreme boredom in Doja Cat.

The rap break in Say So is arguably the most egregious aspect of the song. It comes out of nowhere, says very little and is not delivered in a memorable fashion. It plays as if Doja Cat could not find a female rapper willing to take part in this song and was left with only herself to perform the break. She picks up the attitude a little in this portion but her strip club posing never comes off as anything other than a pose.

"Let me check my chest, my breath right quick (ha)

He ain't never seen it in a dress like this (ah)

He ain't never even been impressed like this

Prolly why I got him quiet on the set like zip

Like it, love it, need it bad

Take it, only, steal it, fast

Boy, stop playing, grab my a**

Why you actin' like you shy?

Shut it, save it, keep it, push

Why you beating 'round the bush?

And knowing you want all this woman

Never knock it 'til you try (yeah, yeah)

All of them b****** hating I have you with me

All of my n***** saying you mad committed

Realer than anybody you had, and pretty

All of that body-ody, the a** and t******"

The second that anyone has to tell you how 'real' they are, the more fake they sound.

So, that’s why I hate Say So. It’s derivative in a way that is deeply unappealing. The lyrics that you can make out without reading along are incomprehensible as a coherent message and the whole thing is like a disco dirge sung by someone damned to perform on an endless loop as some sort of punishment for unnamed atrocities committed.

I loathe this song in ways I have never before loathed a song.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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