By the time you read this, the world will probably know what songs Warner Bros. has decided to submit from “Barbie” for Original Song Oscar consideration. And there is an embarrassment of riches. There is the Dua Lipa song of summer, “Dance The Night Away,” Billie Eillish’s smash “What Was I Made For?” and, of course, the Ryan Gosling showstopper, “I’m Just Ken.” But for Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, who have music by credit on the film and produced the soundtrack album, it’s clear their heart is with the latter.
Both Grammy and Oscar winners, along with Lady Gaga for “Shallow,” the pair thought they had nailed “I’m Just Ken” when Gerwig threw them a bit of a curveball. An unexpected challenge that created one of the biggest urban slang additions of 2023: Kenergy.
Ronson notes, “We had written what we thought was the whole song, and then Greta was like, ‘No, I now have this dance-off scene, and can you make a piece of the song where it elevates?’ I guess it could have gone into a score or done something else, but we wanted to all feel like movements in the same song. And we saw the choreography and that white space and that incredible dancing and the cinematography, and I think it almost told us what to write. And, in an earlier version of the demo, we had the line with ‘My big Ken energy,’ and it was like, ‘This is a bad joke, and we should just say Kenergy. That’s so much funnier.’ So we didn’t have anywhere to put the word Kenergy, though. And we just saw Ryan and a hundred other dancers plieing and jetéing across the screen, and we’re like, this is Kenergy. And then Andrew came up with that melody, ‘Can you feel Kenergy?’ And we just went full balls to the wall, and she happened to like it.”
Over the course of our conversation, the pair reveal whether they know what songs WB will submit, how Gerwig pitched the project, Eilish and her brother Finneas’ surprise connection to the world of Barbie, and much more.
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The Playlist: I’m going to ask you the question that only people who are obsessed with the Oscars like me, who work on this 365 days a year to my detriment, you got to tell us what are the three songs, how many songs are you submitting?
Mark Ronson: That’s actually not up to us at all. That’s a studio answer.
The Playlist: That question?
Mark Ronson: Yeah, that’s the studio, and the label picked that. Obviously, there are songs that we wrote that we’re very proud of, but at the same time, even a song that we just did the orchestration for, “What Was I Made for?” I mean, it is such an incredible song. I would say we’re just sort of Team “Barbie” to fly the pink flag, but I have fantasies, of course, of Slash and Ryan on stage at the Oscars, so I’d be lying if I said no, but we’ll see what happens.
The Playlist: Mark, I’m assuming you came onto this first project first?
Mark Ronson: I came on a little bit before Andrew. Yeah, just a little bit.
The Playlist: So what was Greta’s pitch when she approached you?
Mark Ronson: To think what the movie then kind of snowballed into it was amazing how low-key and humble it was just a Zoom. She was in London getting ready to do, they were doing some pre-production, and it was like, “Yeah, I’ve got this film, and I’m doing ‘Barbie.’” And instantly, I was kind of like, “Cool. That’s bizarre.” And she said, “There’s two songs. We need a Barbie song and a Ken song. And really, the Barbie song is this big dance number that’s going to happen at the end of Barbie’s Best Day Ever. And then there’s a Ken song that might not go in the film, or we don’t know, but it’s just a song that should talk from Ken’s story.” And that was it. And she sent this funny PDF of her and Noah’s bullet points. I think they famously say that they didn’t do treatments even when Mattel wanted a treatment in the beginning or Warner’s. They did bizarre tone poems, and they sent us this thing that was like the Barbie song. “Everything is always perfect in Barbie land, and music is circles and dancing in circles, therefore, everything is a circle. And there’s seven sons, so no one has a shadow.” Just totally loopy, but it also just gives us the spirit of what it should be about. And then, for Ken’s song, it just said like “Ken loves horses. He longs to be hugged even though he has no genitals and doesn’t really know what that means.” And then there was actually a lyric in there that said, “he has feelings he can’t explain,” and we do have to give Greta credit because they don’t have a songwriting credit on Ken. But there was a moment we were writing the verse, and we kind of just had a little bit of writer’s block, and we’re like, “Let’s look back at that sheet.” And it said, “He has feelings he can’t explain.” Like good, that’s fine, that’ll go. And so yeah, that’s what it was. And so we wrote the Instrumental for “Dance the Night” because they needed to start the dance rehearsals right away. And so Dua didn’t end up coming in to write the song until a little bit later. And then we wrote “Ken,” because Ken is this sort of slightly tragic figure of the film, and as songwriters, sometimes it’s easier to access that loser melancholy part because great songs come from that. And so we really dug into the Ken song in a way that sort of got us in our feelings.
The Playlist: Andrew, when did you know that the Ken song was going to work?
Andrew Wyatt: I think when we had the verse that was written in a different key from the chorus, and I knew what key I wanted to hear it in. And I think it’s because it’s, “I’m just Ken,” and it’s three things. You could almost put it in any key, but once we put the verse and the chorus together, it was like, your chocolate is in my peanut butter. And those things both came together to be something greater than the sum of its parts.
Mark Ronson: The verse in the chorus as we had written, at first they were in the same key and then it wasn’t until we switched the first chorus to modulate up that it felt like, “Whoa, what’s happening here?” It’s just something subtle, and it’s really only Andrew, with his math brain new to do that I wouldn’t have really noticed a difference. But as soon as he moved the chorus up a key, so it modulates in the verse, it did that sort of musical thing. And then, you know, we only know if we think it’s good. Certainly, at this early point, Greta and Noah were enthusiastic about it, but like we know, when there’s a demo that you’ve made that you leave the studio in your car and you listen to 10 times in a row, this two-minute demo that you have that feeling about it. That’s what it felt like even though it was very, very bare bones in that first demo, it didn’t have the crazy instrumentation in the orchestra. It just gave us the feeling.
The Playlist: Where did the inspiration come from for the “Can you feel the Kenergy” moment of the song?
Mark Ronson: We had written the whole song. Well, we had written what we thought was the whole song, and then Greta was like, “No, I now have this dance-off scene, and can you make a piece of the song where it elevates?” I guess it could have gone into a score or done something else, but we wanted to all feel like movements in the same song. And we saw the choreography and that white space and that incredible dancing and the cinematography, and I think it almost told us what to write. And, in an earlier version of the demo, we had the line with “My big Ken energy,” and it was like, “This is a bad joke, and we should just say Kenergy. That’s so much funnier.” So we didn’t have anywhere to put the word Kenenergy, though. And we just saw Ryan and a hundred other dancers plieing and jetéing across the screen, and we’re like, this is Kenergy. And then Andrew came up with that melody, “Can you feel Kenergy?” And we just went full balls to the wall, and she happened to like it.
The Playlist: “Kenergy” became sort of like a meme and part of a pop culture phenomenon. How does it feel all these months later that if you say that to someone, they immediately know what it means?
Mark Ronson: It’s pretty crazy. I mean, I think that when they had the first marketing campaign for it, even before people had heard a single bit of the song, it was like, “She’s everything. He’s just Ken,” it was kind of cool because like, “Oh, even the marketing department likes our song. They’re weaving it in.” And the fact that people already had really turned that whole thing into a meme using Prince Charles and Princess Diana she’s everything, he’s just Ken It just became like, “This is going to help us because when people hear the song, they already have this relationship with that phrase.” I honestly believe that some clever journalist, of course, would’ve invented the word Kenergy by now if we had never thought of it. But it was just everything. That’s the f**king beauty of TikTok and all these things, all these ways that people have made videos and dance choreo videos and tributes to their partners using this song. The coolest thing ever as a songwriter is to just see like, “Oh, your song has captured someone’s imagination in a way that they’ve just made a thing that you never would’ve thought of in a million years.” That’s the kind of the beauty of social media, I guess.
The Playlist: You’re also the producer of the soundtrack and I’m assuming you worked with Greta to pick the other songs that are in the film.
Mark Ronson: Of course.
The Playlist: Whose idea was it to go to Billie Eilish and can you talk about what that process was with her song and sort of integrating it into the film?
The Playlist: I mean, Greta had her wishlist that she came up with when we started and there were obvious people, Dua, and of course, Billie Eilish are going to be at the top of any list like that. She’s one of the best songwriters of her generation, her and Finneas. And they were already fans. A lot of people were huge fans of Greta because of “Lady Bird” and “Little Women.” I think she reached out to Billi or something. Oh no! Billie and Finneas, their dad was a carpenter and used to build these giant Barbie sets at Mattel Expos in the ’80s and ’90s. He was a designer and it actually came through Ynon at Mattel* who was like, “Finneas and Billy have this connection to Barbie through their dad and this kind of thing.” And then it turned out that they’re also big fans of Greta’s films and they just watched the film and were inspired.
*Ynon Kreiz, Chairman and CEO of Mattel
“Barbie” is available on MAX to stream and digital platforms for download
