Filmtracks: Barbie (Mark Ronson/Andrew Wyatt)

Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #2,071
Written 8/13/23

Invert Colors

Buy it... on the score-only album if you intend to pair it with the songs in the film, the two connected too closely for the score to be appreciable on its own.

Avoid it... if you expect the composers to devise a score that tells the story independently, its adequate extension of the songs supplying an insufficient and wayward narrative.

Barbie: (Mark Ronson/Andrew Wyatt) In the age of woke progressivism, writer and director Greta Gerwig managed the impossible: adapt Mattel's Barbie fashion dolls into a billion-dollar grossing cinematic phenomenon. With no lack of the color pink, 2023's Barbie navigates the minefields surrounding the concept by making it ponderously self-aware. The titular character, perfect in her fantasy Barbieland with the hopeless Ken doll, suddenly experiences an existential crisis, and the two leads travel to the real world and interact with actual Mattel employees to help them discover new purposes in life. The comedy is filled with enough sociopolitical controversy to stir unrest in audiences at both ends of the belief spectrum, but ultimately the movie's left-leaning tilt is a defining characteristic. Men dragged into watching the event were met with an equal amount of commentary about patriarchal mores, as the movie affords Ken no less of a journey. The soundtrack for the stunningly successful film proved to be a popular powerhouse itself, mainly because Gerwig sought a wide range of popular artists to write and perform new songs specifically tailored to specific scenes in the movie. While the Ken character does receive musical numbers to himself, Barbie is more of a third-person, song-driven narrative rather than a musical for on-screen singing. The director employed seasoned songwriter and producer Mark Ronson to coordinate these songs, co-writing several of them along with collaborator Andrew Wyatt. The two had won an Academy Award for composing the super-popular "Shallow" from A Star is Born a few years earlier. Interestingly, Gerwig had originally hired composer Alexandre Desplat to write the score for Barbie. The two had collaborated successfully on Little Women, but Desplat bowed out of Barbie at some point. In retrospect, it's not difficult to see that the project was one completely ill-suited to Desplat, though it would have been humorous to hear him adapt his trademark sound into that which ultimately succeeded him in the film.

Rather than hire another veteran film composer for Barbie, Gerwig asked Ronson and Wyatt to write the underscore for the film themselves. The task was largely new for the pair, and they were initially quite nervous about handling the task. Fortunately for them, the bulk of the film's running time, and certainly all the most obvious scenes featuring music, is handled by the songs. The situation was similar in ways to the comedic approach facing Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story the previous year, though the parody element is diminished in the equation here. Ronson and Wyatt had two strategic options for the not-insignificant amount of score material required in between the song placements: write music serving as a straight instrumental extension of the songs or attempt to create a narrative within the score alone. Birenberg and Robinson had selected the latter approach for their parody, but Ronson and Wyatt instead got lost halfway in between. Their score can't decide the extent to which it uses the songs' melodies and instrumental personalities as a guiding beacon, which leaves some cues dripping with song connections while other stumble in their attempt to define a distinct, score-only narrative. Some of the better (and appropriate) song melodies don't make it into the score while others are over-utilized. Motifs largely unique to the score, meanwhile, don't have enough character on their own to serve an overarching purpose. The score is adequate at every moment, and it's even quite clever at times, but it fails to really live up to the potential that it could have enjoyed if the songs had more cohesively driven its spotting. The songs co-written by Ronson and Wyatt are more likely to be included in the score, and, as to be expected, some of them have more malleable and memorable melodies to adapt. Five or six of the roughly twenty songs featured in the film are considered tentpoles of the musical overall. They don't really have much to do with each other because of their disparate creation process, but the soundtrack as a whole enjoys a positive, somewhat 1990's-driven demeanor with only the three Ken songs providing a dose of toxic masculinity to steer away from the target demographic.

Read More...

The most important six songs of Barbie are all adapted at least once into Ronson and Wyatt's score. The opening credits song performed by Lizzo, "Pink," is a vital bookend, a straight instrumental version of the song heard early in "Pink ("Barbie" Opening Theme)" and a quick allusion at the start of "Beach Off" before returning with its original spirit in "Deprogramming" and lightly at 1:14 into "An Ending." Equally vital is Dua Lipa's "Dance the Night," its double hand clap effects in particular applied liberally throughout the score. Its instrumention informs the second half of "Creation of Barbie," lends its clapping to "Stairway to Weird Barbie," and, with fantastic parody application, guides a masculine version reworked well in "Mattel;" the synthetic brass is disappointing in "Mattel," but the cue is a conceptual winner. Representing the existential aspect of the story is Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?," which translates to the score's conversational cues with as little excitement as Eilish's typical performance. Very subdued on piano in "Bus Stop Billie," this idea is turned into an almost Desplat-like, whistled waltz in "Meeting Ruth." It's extremely solemn in the underwhelming "I Don't Have an Ending" and returns to original form in "What Was I Made For? (Epilogue)" before the song itself is featured second in the end credits. Of the three Ken songs, "I'm Just Ken" is one of two performed actor Ryan Gosling himself, and this rock ballad's chord progressions dominate "You Failed Me!," though the instrumentals are distorted badly in the mix. Figuring less obviously into the score is Sam Smith's impressive "Man I Am," which has one of the more compelling melodic lines from any of the songs. It drives the initial personality of "Beach Off" but devolves into a Beach Boys imitation, and echoes of the descending lines from the song guide "Ken Thinks." For a more action-oriented connection, the song "Speed Drive," performed by Charli XCX, propels the percussive rhythms and bassline in "Lose These Chuckleheads." A few songs are used multiple times in the film rather than figuring them into the score, including two featuring only on a deluxe-only version of the song album: covers of 1989 song "Closer to Fine" (Indigo Girls) and Gosling's performance of the 1997 song "Push." The absence of prominence for these songs in the score is odd.

Among the other songs in Barbie, there are four that probably should have figured more directly into the surrounding underscore if Ronson and Wyatt had taken a better path of pure adaptation. The situation with Nicki Minaj's "Barbie World" is dissatisfying all-around; this, the first end credits song, is not a good replacement for the classic 1990's song "Barbie Girl" (despite samples of it overlaid here), which would have been a better inclusion if not for likely interference from legal issues historically pitting its performer, Aqua, against Mattel back in the day. Three other songs that would have been good candidates to influence the score include Tame Impala's "Journey to the Real World," which is not adapted into the score cue "Send Me Through the Portal" for whatever reason, Haim's "Home," with its compelling lyricism, and Ava Max's "Choose Your Fighter," a spirited 1990's Ace of Base imitation with a bassline that might influence "Alan vs Kens," though the personality is not the same. The resulting score is about as wayward as the song collection overall, some parts really engrossing while others lag behind. As previously mentioned, the conversational cues are badly underplayed compared to surrounding material, partly due to their steady reliance on the rather sour Eilish song. The final moments of the score's narrative are particularly hindered by a lack of any resonance whatsoever, Ronson and Wyatt seemingly content to let these scenes sink in without any dramatic swell whatsoever from the score. These eight minutes in "An Ending," "I Don't Have an Ending," and "What Was I Made For? (Epilogue)" offer absolutely no catharsis to bring the characters home musically. This is where Ronson and Wyatt face their greatest challenges; the score simply has no real narrative on its own. When relying upon its references to the songs, the score is fine. In fact, these are some of the best moments along the way. But even the tone of the score doesn't manage to capture the upbeat spirit of the songs throughout, despite offering some of the same background vocals at times. A surprising lack of charm exists in the performances outside of the most extroverted renditions of the songs' instrumentals. There was great opportunity for a tender and heart-warming score to develop from this film's narrative, and Ronson and Wyatt simply didn't find that right touch.

The score's construction is all over the place, at times symphonic but occasionally sounding cheaply synthetic. The brass in a few cues has a roughly rendered presence, and there are few moments of notable woodwinds. The soundscape generated by Ronson and Wyatt for Barbie is mostly defined by strings, synths, and electric bass, resulting in a contemporary ambience not entirely unexpected for the songwriters. There are some motifs explored by the composers that don't seem to originate from any of the songs, but only one has a lasting impact. A mostly keyboarded, descending mystery motif is reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith's The 'Burbs and consolidates in the latter half of "Stairway to Weird Barbie." It dances behind melodramatic chord progressions in "Thoughts of Death," co-exists with another motif in "Send Me Through the Portal," and returns at 0:31 into "An Ending" in lighter shades. A likeable determination motif of sorts is heard in the latter half of "Send Me Through the Portal" and represents perhaps the best lyricism from the score; this cue still could have used a reference to one of the appropriate song melodies instead, though. Finally, a somewhat inept love theme has trouble defining itself in "Warmth of Your Gaze," perhaps purposefully vague given the romantic challenges in the story. The moments of outright parody in the score for Barbie are obvious but not numerous. Highlighting two key moments is the ever-popular "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss in "Creation of Barbie" (a straight orchestral rendition) and "Ken Makes a Discovery" (a blend of symphony and funk). Hints of "Hail to the Chief" by James Sanderson meander late in "Pink ("Barbie" Opening Theme)" for the President Barbie concept. These cues contribute to a decent but somewhat underwhelming score for Barbie that can never seem to decide how heavily to rely upon the songs. The score's only average appeal was likely a result sealed during the spotting stage of production, with the Eilish song's outsized influence a poor choice given its lack of warmth for any of those adaptations. The songs are also a very hit-and-miss prospect. The whole soundtrack requires a combined, chronological song and score presentation to best appreciate. The release of the two halves on separate albums defies the fact that all the music for Barbie is too synergistic for such a release. Film score collectors will find little value to the score-only album even though it serves its purpose well enough. *** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Filmtracks Home	Reviews
Scoreboard	Desktop Site