Songfacts®:

• "Don't Cha" was the biggest hit for The Pussycat Dolls, which started as a dance troupe in 1995 but became a singing act when they signed a record deal and revamped their lineup in 2003. They established themselves as sexy, sassy stars who could get men to do their bidding, and "Don't Cha" plays up this image. The song finds them taunting guys by asking, "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" It was right in line with their unapologetically sexual image.
• The writing credits on this song read: Thomas DeCarlo Callaway and Anthony L. Ray. You know them better as Cee-Lo Green from The Goodie Mob and Gnarls Barkley and Sir Mix-A-Lot of "Baby Got Back" fame. The song was originally recorded by Tori Alamaze in 2004. Alamaze was a makeup artist and backup singer who was signed to Cee-Lo's production company. Shortly after her version was released as a single, her record company dropped her and stopped promoting the song, so very few people heard it. The next year, The Pussycat Dolls recorded it in a version also produced by Cee Lo and with Busta Rhymes on guest vocals.
  
  Sir Mix-A-Lot got the writing credit because the hook borrows from his 1988 song "Swass," where he raps in the same vocal melody:
  
  Don't you wish your boyfriend was swass like me
• In 2006, "Don't Cha" was used in a TV commercial for Heineken Light beer.
• The song was first recorded by Tori Alamaze, who released it as her first single in 2004. Alamaze was a popular backup singer, but her solo career never got off the ground and her version of "Don't Cha" didn't get much attention. When The Pussycat Dolls sauced it up and released it in 2006, most people assumed they were the first to record it.
• The first Pussycat Dolls single was a cover of the standard "Sway" released in 2004 for the movie Shall We Dance? It didn't get much attention, and many were skeptical when the group put out their debut album, PCD, in 2005 with "Don't Cha" as the lead single. Critics were silenced when the song ran up the charts to #2, where it stayed for three weeks behind Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together." They followed with the hits "Beep," "Stickwitu" and "Buttons," and launched a world tour in 2006. Their next album, Doll Domination, was issued in 2008 with the hit "When I Grow Up," but the group fell apart soon after. They broke up in 2010, and a reunion tour in 2020 was scuttled by Covid.
• Q magazine January 2012 asked Cee-Lo Green if he pretended to be an attractive girl to help him get into character when he penned this song? He replied: "No, I was trying to think of an ideal woman - who would be so bold as to say something as outspoken as that song."
• The group was led by Nicole Scherzinger, who had done time in another girl group, Eden's Crush (perhaps you remember their 2001 hit "Get Over Yourself"). She was clearly the lead singer, but according to Scherzinger, she was really the only singer. Speaking on a 2012 Behind The Music special for VH1, she said she did most of the singing "on my own" for the PCD album. "People don't even know the whole story. They have no idea. I was in the center because I was singing," she said. "I hope I don't get in trouble for the stuff that I say but I'll never forget I finished the album, PCD, and Ron (executive producer Ron Fair) and I brought the girls into the studio and we played it for them. It was the first time they'd ever heard the music."
  
  "Do you understand what I'm saying?" she continued. "We played the album for the Pussycat Dolls. It was the first time they'd ever heard the songs."
• "Don't Cha" featured in the Sims 2 Pets video game. The Pussycat Dolls recorded the song in Simlish, the fictional language of the Sims.
• Nicole Scherzinger, who was using the name Nicole Kea when the song was released, framed it as a female empowerment anthem, telling MTV, "If you see the video, it's all about being who you are, having fun and being confident - and feeling hot. It's not so much about looking hot... although looking hot is important."
• Around the time this song was released, The Pussycat Dolls Lounge opened at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip, with Busta Rhymes joining the Dolls at the opening.