Doja Cat’s ‘Scarlet’ Aiming for Underwhelming Debut

This weekend, Doja Cat released her fourth studio album Scarlet. Her first full-length effort in over two years, Scarlet‘s rollout saw Doja purposefully alienate a portion of her fanbase, while the contents of the eventual LP involved a deviation from her trademark, upbeat pop approach to a more toned-down hip-hop sound. And for this, evidently, she paid the price.

On Saturday, HitsDailyDouble reported their projections for the Billboard 200 chart for this week’s releases. Along with projecting that Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS would reclaim its stop at No. 1, a week after Rod Wave came out of nowhere to snatch it from her, HITS also suggested that Doja’s album would see a bit of a letdown in terms of sales.

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Predicting that the album would likely sell around 50,000-55,000 units, HITS noted that Scarlet would still be the top album debut of the week, but did not even consider that it could reach No. 1. In fact, numbers like these would mean a decrease in over 50,000 album sales from her prior album Planet Her, which debuted at No. 1 with 109,000 copies sold in 2021.

However, it seems like Doja may have been preparing for a result like this in the weeks leading up to Scarlet. Around the same time she told her fans that she didn’t love them via Twitter in July, which resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of social media followers, Doja explained that the music she’s making currently and the bit of angst she’s displayed has been beneficial for her mental health.

“I have thrown fits my whole career because I have been making music that didn’t allow me to have a mental release,” she told V Magazine in a July interview. “I have been making music that is palatable, marketable and sellable, that has allowed me to be where I am now. These upcoming projects are going to be very different compared to everything I have done and I am excited about that. I do not care if people are not.”

Despite Scarlet‘s underwhelming sales, Doja was still able to net a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 with her dominant promotional single “Paint The Town Red,” which served as the intro for her new project.

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for MTV