The Barbie soundtrack is packed with pop bangers poised to flood the charts

It looked good on paper but music writer Kathy McCabe reveals just what about the Barbie soundtrack will have the charts and dancefloors spinning.

Barbie The Album will leave pop fans tickled pink.

Hitmaker Mark Ronson, who possesses a preternatural gift for shaping the sound of now, has assembled a glittering cast of chart slayers at the peak of their powers to curate songs for specific scenes of the movie but which also stand alone as pop bangers.

Sam Smith corrects their try-too-hard misstep with Madonna on the ill-fated Vulgar with a return to edgy form on dancefloor-filler Man I Am. Champions of Ken will be chanting “Super sleazy, sexy and freaky Ken tonight” at a nightclub near you this weekend.

Sam Smith’s Man I Am is a dancefloor filler. Picture: Supplied

There has been a lot of noise about the Aqua’s house hit Barbie Girl being shoe-horned into the movie at the insistence of its star Margot Robbie, via a reinvention from Harajuku Barbie rapper Nicki Minaj and her heiress apparent Ice Spice.

Their Barbie World track is so far the biggest hit on streaming and social media platforms – it’s in the top 10 songs on Spotify in Australia – but the true sister song to the Aqua classic is Ava Max’s Choose Your Fighter which she wrote with Ronson in under two hours.

It sounds like it was plucked from the Euro house wave that swept Australian charts in the 90s.

Forget Barbie Girl! Ava Max’s Choose Your Fighter is the soundtrack’s Eurohouse moment. Picture: Supplied

The soundtrack’s guilty pleasure is Ryan Gosling’s power rock ballad I’m Just Ken. It’s emo Kenergy on “plastic” steroids, channelling the piano and guitar drama of Bohemian Rhapsody with Slash adding his signature axe skills. And the most laugh-out-loud lyrics of any song to be released this year.

The Australian artists featured on the soundtrack shine in their lanes. Ronson’s mate and collaborator Kevin Parker brings Tame Impala’s shimmering psychedelia to the mix with Journey To The Real World, a song unashamedly inspired by Xanadu.

Tame Impala take Barbie fans on a psychedelic trip. Picture: Supplied.

And the Kid Laroi has yet another hit on his hands with his acoustic guitar-driven pop ballad Forever & Again – cue the waving phone lights the next time he plays this at a show.

Pop wunderkind Khalid is on point again with the 70s Doobie Brothers vibe of Silver Platter; his vocals are the most stunning of the album’s offerings alongside the melancholic beauty of Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For?

Billie Eilish brings her warm melancholia to the film with What Was I Made For? Picture: YouTube.

Splendour In The Grass headliner Lizzo’s discotastic track Pink is perhaps the song most obviously ripped from the movie’s narrative, and is immediately followed by the soundtrack’s first single from fellow disco queen Dua Lipa (Dance The Night).

Barbie The Album’s nostalgia trip is fuelled by a handful of other clever interpolations of pop classics. Toni Basil’s Mickey gets a reworking in the stellar Charli XCX Speed Drive while abcdefu chart-topper Gayle gives Crazy Town’s 1999 smash Butterfly a nu-metal rev-up.

Mark Ronson channels Running Barbie ahead of the soundtrack release. Picture: Instagram / Mak Ronson.

In the postmillennial marriage of film and music, soundtracks have tended to enjoy success with rusted-on fan favourites from yesteryear (Bohemian Rhapsody and Guardians of the Galaxy) or the tenuous “music inspired by” formula which got across the line by using a beloved hit or new original track over the credits.

But Ronson, in cahoots with the film’s director Greta Gerwig and his enviable roster of stars who said yes to his invitation to play with Barbie, offer a true pop culture moment with a soundtrack brimming with potential smash hits.

Originally published as The Barbie soundtrack is packed with pop bangers poised to flood the charts