The song is featured on the movie’s anticipated soundtrack, which also includes music from Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, and is out on July 21.
Ken doesn’t know who he is without Barbie in Ryan Gosling’s single for the upcoming Greta Gerwig-directed and Margot Robbie-starring Barbie movie.
The long-teased song “Just Ken,” sees Barbie’s longstanding boyfriend grappling with what it means to be “number two” in his relationship with the iconic Mattel doll. The minute-and-half look at the song not only features new footage of Gosling’s Ken and Robbie’s Barbie but also a wider look at a group dance number featuring all the movie’s Kens.
The ballad’s lyrics see Gosling emotionally addressing the fact that the doll is “always number two,” and how anywhere else he’d be a 10, but here, he’s “just Ken.”
“Is it my destiny to live a life of blond fragility?” Gosling’s Ken wonders as this “Beach Ken” is launched into the air after having tried to surf. “What will it take for her to see the man behind the tan and fight for me.”
Speaking to GQ magazine following the early backlash to casting Gosling as Ken, the actor addressed how little Barbie’s boyfriend has been actively thought about in the toy’s history.
“I would say, you know, if people don’t want to play with my Ken, there are many other Kens to play with,” he said. “It is funny,” he began, “this kind of clutching-your-pearls idea of, like, #notmyken. Like you ever thought about Ken before this?
“And everyone was fine with that, for him to have a job that is nothing,” he added. “But suddenly, it’s like, ‘No, we’ve cared about Ken this whole time.’ No, you didn’t. You never did. You never cared. Barbie never fucked with Ken. That’s the point. If you ever really cared about Ken, you would know that nobody cared about Ken. So your hypocrisy is exposed. This is why his story must be told.”
In a more recent interview with Vanity Fair, Ronson reveals that the song wasn’t written with Gosling in mind, and was given to him at the actor’s instance that he perform it in the film. Gerwig then rewrote a scene late in the movie, before asking Ronson and Andrew Wyatt to write a score leading into the song.
Gosling recorded the song in London, with the legendary Slash and new Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese performing on the track. Ronson said he didn’t have to make pitch adjustments for the actor who hit all the notes as written. “He really got [that] it had to walk this line of not being funny or parody,” the producer said. “But obviously, the song is also kind of ridiculous at times. So he was really amazing, and when he really did start hitting the big notes, I was like, this dude is a vocal powerhouse!”
The full Barbie movie soundtrack, which also features songs from Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, is being released by Atlantic on July 21.