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Hi, Barbie! Welcome to Unboxed, a pop-up newsletter from The Washington Post. Comments, questions, concerns? Drop me a line at unboxed@washingtonpost.com.
When you think of Barbie, what do you hear? For me, it’s the cassette single that came with the 1996 Workin’ Out Barbie, which I absolutely wore out in the first grade. Workin’ Out Barbie wore neon-pink spandex and “suction cup shoes,” which theoretically made her easier to maneuver into Jazzercise poses. The “Workin’ Out” song is amazingly on SoundCloud and still sounds kind of … good?
But I am not a pop music critic. To discuss the soundtrack for “Barbie,” which will be released in full alongside the movie on Friday, I chatted with a professional: The Post’s Chris Richards, who has been the paper’s pop music critic since 2009. We discussed the hits and the misses on the soundtrack, as well as Mattel’s years-long, ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit against the Danish-Norwegian pop group Aqua over their 1997 hit “Barbie Girl.” (Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ultimately ruled in favor of Aqua’s label, MCA Records, in 2002, and memorably concluded his opinion with the admonishment, “The parties are advised to chill.”)
Mark Ronson, who produced the soundtrack, has said that he was inspired by disco — he drew a parallel between ’70s disco acts like the Bee Gees realizing people hated them to Barbie waking up in the film and realizing people don’t like her, either. What do you think about the disco elements in the soundtrack and the Dua Lipa track, “Dance the Night,” specifically?
Oh, that’s a really interesting parallel — I hadn’t heard that. You know, I think Dua Lipa is almost the ideal artist for this kind of project. She makes disco, but more in the mode of Kylie Minogue or Madonna — she sounds like she’s studied disco’s imitators more closely than she studied disco itself.
That is such a good fit for the Barbie universe because Barbie stretches and refracts through so many decades of American culture. There’s this blurry demarcation line between what’s fake and what’s real that is so central to the idea of Barbie. It also lines up in a very tidy parallel to the fakeness and realness in pop music, so much of which owes this huge debt to disco and the propulsive beat behind it. So it feels like a pretty thoughtful match, actually.
The Haim sisters, who have an as-yet-unreleased song on the soundtrack, have said they were inspired by an old Barbie VHS tape with “cheesy songs” that they used to watch on repeat. There is this sort of inherent cheesiness to Barbie. How do you think the artists and Ronson have approached that element in the soundtrack?
So much about pop music is meant to be direct and sincere in ways that maybe more skeptical listeners might find to be cheesy.
Having only played with Barbie dolls while visiting my neighbor’s house in the ’80s a couple times, it’s obviously this incredibly imaginative activity, and you’re participating in this fantasy world in this intimate way. That lines up so neatly with how we experience popular music — it’s this fabulous other world that feels kind of beyond our reach, but we feel incredibly close to it. So that’s a really rich vein they’re tapping into.
Of course I have to ask you about “Barbie World,” the single from Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice that samples Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” How does Mattel go from claiming the lyrics were damaging to Barbie’s reputation to fully embracing this song in 2023?
As we push into the darkest depths of the social media age, brands are finally starting to realize that they need to get on the side of the people. It’s been 25 years since Aqua released “Barbie Girl,” right? That’s a quarter of a century. The song is a classic now, or at least a camp classic, and I think it’s easy to argue that “Barbie Girl” did far more to strengthen the Barbie brand than hurt it. Fast-forwarding to the new song, I’m totally delighted that Nicki Minaj is a part of it; she’s used Barbie imagery in her music for years.
I’m a little bit sad about how it turned out for Ice Spice, though. I think her voice is just this magnificently intimate and nuanced thing, and it really gets eaten up in the pink maximalism of the Aqua sample. I think it’s a new artist thing. She’s still introducing herself to the world, and I think she kind of forgot that Barbie needs her a little more than she needs Barbie at this moment.
Are there any other surprises on the soundtrack for you?
From what I’ve heard, the most arresting track is Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” It’s this ballad that you could read to be about the commodification of a pop star, or even, more broadly, almost like an existential plea to God. I just love when pop songs find ways to simultaneously feel very small and very big in the way that this one does.
Ronson said this week, “It’s probably my favorite Billie Eilish song, and also one of my favorite vocals of just, hands down, of the last 10 years of pop music.”
Finally, I have to mention the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine,” which is not on the official soundtrack but appears in the film as Barbie is driving out of Barbieland in her little Corvette and into the real world. Do you think it could hit the charts again in the wake of the movie release?
It could happen! We’re seeing now a lot of older songs become contemporary hits. It happened with Kate Bush and her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” and “Stranger Things” last year.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
“The Spice Girls changed everything and dictated my version of second-wave feminism. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, they wear little sparkly dresses and push-up bras, and then have a girl gang? That’s what I want to be!’” – Margot Robbie, to Rolling Stone, on her own musical influences
- What guitar does Ryan Gosling as Ken play in the movie? That would be Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell’s signature Gibson Fire Devil Songwriter acoustic, per Guitar World.
- Gosling’s not keeping the guitar, though: In this Reel, he offered it to BTS’s Jimin after inadvertently copying his outfit.
- Prepping for “Barbenheimer”? The films have more in common than you think.
- “Barbie” is not “Chinese Communist propaganda,” though — that’s just Ted Cruz talking.
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Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/07/20/what-does-barbie-sound-like/