Massive music stars contributing to film soundtracks… it’s a funny old thing. Ideally, you’re left with a stone-cold classic that stands up alone (just ask Celine Dion, Berlin, Bryan Adams, or about a quarter of the artists to ever do a Bond theme) but mostly the results tend to be headscratchers. To this day, I still have no idea how on earth Justin Timberlake ended up writing the theme tune to the Trollz movie.
So, packed with huge names including Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Tame Impala, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, Barbie’s soundtrack comes with some fairly lofty (and difficult-to-meet) expectations attached. Oh, and it’s also executive produced by none other than Mark Ronson; one of the brains behind Lady Gaga’s belting theme tune Shallow in A Star is Born.
Though it’s admittedly no Shallow, Dua Lipa’s contribution Dance the Night feels most capable of finding life outside of Barbie’s silver screen, mostly because it sounds like it could easily be a bonus track from 2020’s nu-disco laden album Future Nostalgia.
Lizzo’s Pink feels less easy to separate – many of her lyrics react to action unfolding on the screen – but still stands out as it pairs Motown horns with bright, campy production that feels pulled straight out of a Nineties Mattel advert.
Charli XCX’s plasticky hyper-pop cut Speed Drive, which interpolates Toni Basil’s Mickey, is also a lighthearted banger, but criminally short at under two-minutes long. Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s quick-paced, innuendo-laden verses have almost zero relevance to the film, but it sounds like they had a lot of fun in the process. Rhyming “Ken” with “10” becomes a popular theme here, and indeed, across the whole soundtrack (pen and zen don’t quite hit the same way, perhaps).
Tame Impala’s Journey To The Real World draws on the super-sheen of Japanese city pop, but flies by mostly without event. KAROL G’s WATATI is adequate enough, but begging for a bit of Pitbull cheese and charisma. Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For on the other hand is a total outlier; a smouldering piano ballad that asks the big, existential questions. Its more straight-faced aesthetic makes much more sense in the context of the story that unfolds on the screen.
South Korean girl group FIFTY FIFTY meanwhile are responsible for the actual greatest song on the soundtrack, sampling Janet Jackson’s Together Again and furnishing it with some brilliant, often nonsensical lyrics. “Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous girls/Flip phones dipped in diamonds and pearls.”
Another highlight comes from Ryan Gosling’s heartfelt fist-clencher Just Ken. We already knew the man had pipes – he also turned crooner in the Oscar-winning 2016 film La La Land – but it’s an extra-special treat hearing him build from whiney power-ballad to synthetic flashes of Eighties synth and yowling guitar as an abundance of Kenergy arrives to proceedings.
Slightly disjointed – almost like Mark Ronson pressed a big red randomiser and went along with whatever wild combinations spewed out the other side – the whole endeavour weirdly works out anyway, despite lacking in almost any conceptual glue. Will any of these songs stick about in the public consciousness for longer than Barbie’s cinema stint? That part that seems less likely.
Atlantic Records
