It wasn’t lengthy after Mark Ronson signed on to govt produce the Barbie soundtrack that he realized the primary lesson of dwelling within the doll’s candy-coated world. He was standing within the aisles of Toys “R” Us one morning, shopping for up Barbies for his studio, when he realized, “You can’t discover a Ken doll for love nor cash in any Toys ‘R’ Us, as a result of no one provides a shit about shopping for a Ken doll.” So he texted Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, who had a number of of the plastic hunks despatched over. “I haven’t been again in my studio shortly, so that they’re nonetheless right here,” Ronson says as one smiles at me from the sting of the Zoom display screen.
When the seven-time Grammy winner first learn Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Barbie script, he instantly linked with the Ken they’d written for Ryan Gosling to play. “You actually fall in love with this hapless, however instantly sympathetic determine,” Ronson says. “I immediately had this concept for this lyric: ‘I’m simply Ken / Wherever else I’d be a ten.’ It simply appeared humorous. It felt slightly bit emo, like, this poor man. He’s so sizzling, however can’t get the time of day.”
“She’s every part. He’s simply Ken” is now plastered throughout billboards and subway stations as the times tick down till Barbie’s July 21 premiere. “It’s form of wild,” says Ronson, who provides that he had no clue that Barbie would grow to be the film you possibly can’t escape this summer time.
Stars Margot Robbie and Gosling have been on a endless press circuit. Twitter can’t get sufficient of the film matchup dubbed “Barbenheimer.” Barbie-branded merchandise is flooding the web. When Barbie: The Album drops the identical day the Gerwig-directed movie hits theaters, it’s going to be all over the place too. Spotify customers have already been including Dua Lipa’s disco pop anthem “Dance the Night time” to playlists and sending Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie Lady”–laced “Barbie World” to quantity seven on the Billboard Sizzling 100 chart. There are additionally songs from Lizzo, Charli XCX, Tame Impala, Haim, and, it was just lately revealed, Billie Eilish and Sam Smith.
Ronson’s work on Barbie started with “Dance the Night time”—and as soon as he entered Barbie’s dreamland, it was laborious to depart. He ended up scoring the movie alongside frequent collaborator Andrew Wyatt. “Greta proves that you may be an extremely strong-minded visionary, however encourage individuals by simply your goodness alone,” Ronson says. “I believe that was what enabled not simply me and the couple of songs that I did, however all people who got here in and made a tune. All people simply felt so free to create.” Under, Ronson breaks down how a few of Barbie: The Album’s greatest tracks got here to be.
“Dance the Night time,” Dua Lipa
The textual content message that kick-started the entire undertaking simply learn: “Barbie?” As quickly as Ronson came upon that Gerwig and Baumbach had been connected, he says, “I used to be like, holy shit, I’m being requested to take a seat on the cool children desk.” He calls the script “so fucking genius and humorous,” and says he was on board instantly.
His first activity: write a dance monitor so catchy it might carry an entire scene within the movie. To get Ronson into the precise headspace, Gerwig made him a playlist filled with disco, obscure Broadway tracks, and light-weight, catchy music he’s dubbed “Peloton pop.” Manufacturing was set to start in simply two weeks, so Ronson put collectively a tune with none lyrics that he titled “Tastes Like Barbie” and despatched it off to Gerwig.
“As a result of it’s Barbie, the intuition is to go to one thing slightly Euro and sugary, and that’s simply by no means what I do,” he says. As an alternative, he wrote one thing that he describes as “positively disco and you may groove to it, and it’s positively gold and sequin-y, but it surely’s acquired a very powerful driving factor to it.” It didn’t take lengthy for Gerwig to textual content again “like, , seven pink coronary heart emojis,” with a message that she liked the tune.
Lipa was Ronson’s first alternative to put in writing the lyrics and “give it an id and a presence,” he says. The singer ended up hitting it off so effectively with Gerwig that she seems within the movie as Mermaid Barbie.
“I’m Simply Ken,” Ryan Gosling
When Ronson first wrote the lyric “Is it my future to stay and die a lifetime of blond fragility?” he wasn’t imagining that Gosling could be singing the tune. He was simply hoping that Gerwig and Baumbach wouldn’t snort in his face. “After I despatched the demo, I type of mumbled that line, as a result of I used to be like, in the event that they don’t prefer it, I don’t need Greta and Noah to suppose that I’m attempting to supply the humorous.”
However Gerwig was a fan, and shortly she handed alongside the message that Gosling was too. In truth, he associated to the tune so deeply that he requested to carry out it within the movie. To accommodate the request, Gerwig rewrote an vital scene late within the film—and requested Ronson and Wyatt to put in writing a rating that will lead into the tune. (Ultimately they agreed to put in writing the rating for the remainder of the movie too.)
