Dominic Fike Reverses Course: 'How to Quit Smoking' and a No. 1 Chance

Dominic Fike's "Babydoll," a casual demo from 2018, reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October — his biggest song to date. The track ballooned from a TikTok hit into a radio smash seven years after its release.

The 30-year-old singer and actor discussed the reversal on Popcast, The New York Times culture chat show, with hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli. He spoke about wrestling, sometimes happily, with fame's temptations, letting go of youthful impulses, and returning to a form of music-making that reminded him of his start.

Who is Dominic Fike?

Fike has spent eight years as a case study in modern formlessness. Sometimes he sounds like Sublime and Weezer, or even John Mayer and Jack Johnson. Other times, he raps.

That genre-shifting has been both asset and liability. It has also defined Fike as a thoroughly modern rock star — one whose career began with a major label bidding war that started while he was in jail for his role in a skirmish with a police officer, followed later by a failed drug test. Since then, he has alternately run toward and away from the limelight.

His résumé spans a handful of albums and mixtapes plus a television career: he played Elliot in "Euphoria," alongside his eventual on-and-off girlfriend Hunter Schafer. But he has also battled addiction, and he has often seemed a reluctant star.

What is 'How to Quit Smoking'?

Fike had been working at Rick Rubin's Shangri-La Studios on his third proper studio album when he reversed course. He decided he needed a different path.

The result is "How to Quit Smoking," his new release, made in a feverish stretch on the road, in hotels and on tour buses. He documented the entire process as a digital scrapbook across Instagram, YouTube and an elaborate livestreaming website.

The album's guest list spans several scenes:

• Kevin Abstract
• Jorjiana
• the incarcerated rapper Tay-K
• Danny Brown

Why does the album mark a shift?

The pivot matters because of where it happened. Fike abandoned a conventional studio album at one of rock's most storied recording spaces and chose instead a process that mirrored his origins — scraps of songs made in transit, shared instantly with fans.

In the Popcast conversation, Fike framed the move as a return to how he started out, paired with an admission that he is still negotiating fame's pull rather than resolving it. The takeaway: a late-blooming No. 10 hit gave Fike the leverage to make his messiest, most spontaneous record yet, and the livestreamed process makes the audience part of it.