Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is set to be a summer sensation for about a thousand reasons. It has an abundance of everything pink; Ryan Gosling is pleasingly vanilla as Ken; it’s about as star-studded as your average night at the Oscars.
But even better than all of that: it also boasts an excellent soundtrack. PinkPantheress is the latest artist to drop a new track from the highly-anticipated Barbie album and by all accounts it’s another banger.
The track itself is slightly different from PinkPantheress’ usual fare: with her signature autotuned vocals, it also features strings, a catchy beat and glossy production. In it, she reflects on a lost love who disappeared on her.
“Cause one day / One day my baby just ran away / My angel / You’re what haunts me now that you’re away,” she sings.
Before dropping the track, she teased a twenty-second clip on her TikTok account, writing that “the song sounds like gospel music sorry. rly excited for u to hear it. i recently got into a car accident that’s neither here nor there tho #bloodpop #countbaldor”.
PinkPantheress herself is something of a mystery: often choosing to avoid the spotlight, she rose to prominence releasing songs on TikTok from her university accommodation before breaking into mainstream success.
The singer-songwriter’s track isn’t the first Barbie song to be released. A few weeks ago, Karol G released her high-energy Watati (ft. Aldo Ranks); Dua Lipa then followed up by releasing her new single and music video for Dance the Night.
In it, she plays a pop-star Barbie making a music video (very meta) – which also features a special appearance from Barbie’s writer and director Greta Gerwig.
There’s more to come: the album will feature tracks from Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, Lizzo, Charli XCX and Tame Impala, among others. And if that’s not enough, it’s also being produced by the multiple award-winning Mark Ronson.
All of this means that when Barbie finally launches, it’s set to be the event of the summer. The film already broke the internet when the first trailer was released: showing Margot Robbie in the title role, it teased guest appearances from Issa Rae, Nicola Coughlan, Kate McKinnon, Dua Lipa… basically, everybody you could think of.
Though the plot has been kept tightly under wraps so far, it seems to show Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken heading out into the ‘real world’, away from the fantasy land they live in and potentially meeting the CEO of Mattel, the real-life makers of the Barbie toy.
Barbie – both the album and the film – will be released globally on July 21.
