Barbie The Album
*Barbie The Album* was *almost* as anticipated as *Barbie* the movie—and for good reason. Executive-produced by Mark Ronson and featuring a global all-star lineup, the soundtrack is full of bangers and clever pop-cultural winks meant to capture the zeitgeist the same way the movie and its marketing machine have. It starts appropriately loud with “Pink,” a roséwave bop by Lizzo that makes you feel like Malibu Barbie driving her beach cruiser down the Pacific Coast Highway and features one of the album’s best sound bites—a cheer-style call-and-response spelling out “P, pretty! I, intelligent! N, never sad! K, cool!” Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” comes next, kicking off a stretch of songs that belongs on any summer going-out playlist: “Barbie World (With Aqua)” by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice is a true Barbie multiverse moment, interpolating the Danish group’s 1997 global hit “Barbie Girl.” Charli XCX’s “Speed Drive” is basically “Vroom Vroom” but Barbie-fied, followed by KAROL G’s bouncing reggaetón track “WATATI” and “Man I Am,” a rousing himbo anthem by Sam Smith. But it’s not just banger after banger: Tame Impala’s trippy intergalactic disco jam “Journey to the Real World” shifts the tone, while “I’m Just Ken,” an ’80s-style power ballad sung by Ryan Gosling himself, threatens to steal the whole show here. With “Home,” HAIM provides Tauruses everywhere with their very own theme song, while Billie Eilish’s spare and surprisingly existential “What Was I Made For?” contributes a healthy measure of emotional depth. But it’s Ava Max’s empowerment anthem “Choose Your Fighter” that may best sum up the hectic but high-minded spirit of the entire project: It’s a celebration of self-expression and freedom from rigid, outdated standards of beauty and femininity. Her point is that anyone can be Barbie, and by the time the Korean girl group FIFTY FIFTY is singing about that “pretty state of mind” in the album’s finale, we are all living our own P-I-N-K Barbie dream.
Curated by Mark Ronson, the pop-heavy soundtrack to the blockbuster doll movie shrivels outside of the magical world of Barbieland.
Barbie doesn’t spotlight every song on the accompanying all-star album. It might be because Gerwig prefers to raise the subject matters of patriarchy, gender equality, capitalism and identity without being too deflected by the musical aspects
Move over, Aqua Girl – there’s a brand new set of Barbie songs in town from Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Lizzo and more.
The vibrant companion to Greta Gerwig’s on-screen eye candy immortalizes this year’s musical zeitgeist. Read our review of Barbie The Album here.
The whole endeavour weirdly works out, despite lacking in almost any conceptual glue
Unusually, the bigger names here – including Dua Lipa and Sam Smith – are the most underwhelming
With a star-studded cast and and an equally star-studded soundtrack, Barbie is not only the movie of the year but the soundtrack of the decade.
Dua Lipa and Charli XCX bring high camp to this Mark Ronson-produced movie mixtape that climaxes with the sugary filth of Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s Barbie World
Although there are some fantastic high points and some tacky low points, 'Barbie: The Album' pulls through with a cheeky victory.
It falls to Sam Smith, PinkPantheress and Charli XCX to provide moments of flair on a relentlessly branded tie-in soundtrack that wears thin very quickly