Ryan Gosling sings ‘I’m just Ken’ in a new trailer for Barbie movie

Barbie might be getting all the spotlight ahead of the much-anticipated release, but Ryan Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken” is a scene stealer. Watch the video.

Fashion, beauty, toys, pink vinyl-wrapped cars … the Barbie takeover is already a pop culture phenomenon.

The Margot Robbie film is guaranteed to be a box office blockbuster.

And Barbie The Album will dominate the global charts, streaming platforms and airwaves for the rest of 2023 with one of the most star-studded collection of pop stars ever to be assembled on a soundtrack.

And Ryan Gosling. The movie star is on the soundtrack singing his character’s power ballad moment in the film called I’m Just Ken. The Mickey Mouse Club child star and La La Land jazz cat has already demonstrated he has pipes and fronted the rock duo Dead Man’s Bones in 2009.

Gosling sings his heart out in his signature anthem I’m Just Ken, which dropped in the film’s latest promo, over-emoting like a teenager with a hairbrush singing at the bathroom mirror.

The song, which bemoans his No.2 status to Barbie, may not set any new streaming records but is bound to become a favourite among Barbie fans for its classic epic rock ballad vibes - Slash even plays guitar on it _ and its amusingly desperate lyrics.

The soundtrack‘s executive producer Mark Ronson revealed at the film’s Los Angeles premiere that Gosling had just three hours to cut his vocals.

Barbie The Album kicked off its campaign to own our playlists with the Dua Lipa big disco scene number Dance The Night which has already spun 90 million streams on Spotify.

Dua Lipa kicked off Barbie’s chart attack with the disco anthem Dance The Night. Picture: Supplied.

Since then, a new song from the film has been released each week with Barbie World, pairing rap queen Nicki Minaj – whose fan army call themselves Barbz – and rising star Ice Spice. Of course that song borrows some of its shine from Barbie Girl, the 1997 giddy Europop anthem from Aqua.

Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj are racing up the charts with their naughty Barbie World. Picture: Instagram

Another bright shiny star was added to the Barbieverse when Billie Eilish revealed she was one of the secret unlisted contributors to the album with a new song What Was I Made For?

Tracks from chartslayers Lizzo, Khalid, Dominic Fike, Ava Max, K-Pop girl group Fifty Fifty, Australia’s own Tame Impala and the Kid Laroi and one more yet-to-be-revealed superstar will also fuel the soundtrack’s ascent after it drops on July 21.

Unlike many sloppy collections which bill themselves as “Music Inspired By” compilations with songs that don’t even feature in the film, each of the Barbie The Album songs were commissioned by director Greta Gerwig to match a particular scene or narrative.

Margot Robbie with Barbie The Album track listing. Picture: Supplied.

“You’re hearing lyrics that are responding to what’s happening onscreen, so the music became more than just music — it became a device to enhance what the audience was watching and experiencing, and got to be the voice of the audience,” Robbie told Rolling Stone.

Australian cinemagoers have a particularly voracious appetite for the music which soundtrack their favourite films, stretching back to the 70s classics of Grease and Saturday Night Fever, through the 80s with Blues Brothers, Top Gun and Dirty Dancing and more recently with the catalogue-refreshing biopics and documentaries Bohemian Rhapsody and John Farnham: Finding The Voice.

John Farnham: Finding the Voice soundtrack peaked at No. 2 on the ARIA charts. Picture: Supplied.

The animated filmverse has also held sway over the ARIA charts for decades with Frozen remaining one of the biggest sellers over the last 50 years.

Film and television have always wielded an exponential power to create pop hits. But that muscle is on steroids in the streaming era when matched with the might of TikTok to usher in overnight success.

Australia’s top music supervision company Level Two, whose tastemaking supervisors have crafted the soundtracks for hit films and series including Offspring, Heartbreak High, Five Bedrooms, The Dry, Love Me and the upcoming Boy Swallows Universe series, have seen licensing requests to sync music to visuals skyrocket over the past decade.

The titanic triumph of Kate Bush’s beloved 1980s song Running Up That Hill after it featured in a pivotal moment in a Stranger Things episode last year has set a new benchmark for filmmakers and advertisers seeking the right song for the right scene.

“I did notice after the Kate Bush phenomenon, more producers saying ‘We want to do that, we want to do a Kate Bush! What are some old songs we could do that with?” music supervisor Julia Webster said.

Kate Bush ruled the world after Stranger Things episode. Picture: RB/Redferns.

Sometimes those perfect matches between music and TV are too successful.

Fans were not happy when Ten dropped Katy Perry’s Hot n Cold as its MasterChef intro theme after 14 years because the “rollovers (licencing fee) every year would have been extraordinary,” according to an industry source.

But the cultural shift in marrying music with visual media is a win-win for not only the filmmakers but artists.

The Netflix reboot of Heartbreak High was a global phenomenal not only prodding Hollywood to take note of the talents of its diverse cast but as a discovery platform for dozens of Australia’s next gen music game-changers including Genesis Owusu, Sampa The Great, Tkay Maidza, Cub Sport, Mallrat and PANIA.

Australian artists including The Kid Laroi are sought after for film and TV music. Picture: Getty.

The series’ supervisor Charlie Lempriere said many of the lesser known artists whose work featured in the series enjoyed significant bumps in their streaming numbers across the world even as the episodes aired.

“They have access to their streaming data and could see the effect the show was having on listening habits in real time,” he said.

Music was once an afterthought for producers who then tried to score expensive songs with a cheap budget to attach to their shows.

Not anymore, according to Jessica Moore, one of the country’s most respected experts at syncing great songs to visuals. Producers and directors increasingly want to employ music to help tell the film’s story because audiences have such a strong emotional connection with songs.

Grease remains the biggest selling soundtrack in Australia. Picture: Getty.)

Moore believes the Australian biopic will continue to be a strong market with the next music era ripe for film and television exploitation being our 80s and 90s pub and alternative rock soundtrack.

“I’ve just finished working on The Dodger, a new show that’s coming out, and the brief for that was Australian pub rock and there’s just so many acts from that era to feature,” Moore said.

“And then that late 80s and early 90s era when you had Hunters and Collectors, The Cruel Sea, magic Dirt, You Am I, that hasn’t even been looked at yet.

“There’s a captive audience just waiting for that.”

Originally published as Ryan Gosling sings ‘I’m just Ken’ in a new trailer for Barbie movie