![]() ![]() Baldor is loosely affiliated with PC Music, the British avant-garde pop collective which, for the past decade, has been releasing music meant to parody the kind of hyper-capitalist pop exemplified by Barbie the Album it makes sense that his contribution would be one of the few to not sound totally denuded of emotion or flair. It’s the only time on Barbie the Album that an artist sounds genuinely inspired by the idea of taking their cues from the film’s plot.Īngel, by PinkPantheress, seems not to have been written according to corporate dictum, and it too is a highlight, the wonderfully wacky producer Count Baldor welding jaunty Irish traditional music on to PinkPantheress’s usual featherlight dance-pop. Man I Am, however, uses Smith’s talent for over-the-top theatrics perfectly, bringing out all the homoerotic tension in chauvinist machismo. Smith has been trying very hard to foster subversion in their work, and for the most part they fall flat: Unholy, their recent hit with Kim Petras, possessed all the venom of one of those domesticated red pandas you see on TikTok. The most intriguing track here is Sam Smith’s Man I Am, a twisted Ronson-produced disco romp ostensibly written to soundtrack Ken’s mid-film pivot to men’s rights activism (yes, really). Billie Eilish’s contribution, the typically maudlin What Was I Made For?, at first scans as one of Eilish’s most salient looks at the alienating nature of fame yet – “Looked so alive, turns out, I’m not real / Just something you paid for” – until you realise a line like “I used to float, now I just fall down” is not metaphor as much as a direct description of a scene in the film.Ĭover art for Barbie the Album Photograph: APĪlthough much of the soundtrack feels like an opportunity for talented, ordinarily innovative artists such as Haim and Tame Impala to cash a fat cheque, there are brief moments of inspiration to be found. Unlike Aqua’s subversive 1997 Eurodance hit Barbie Girl (itself sampled on this album’s enjoyable Nicki Minaj/Ice Spice track Barbie World, one of Minaj’s better singles in recent years) these songs unquestioningly metabolise the themes and aesthetics of both Barbie (the doll) and Barbie (the film). I’m not so daft as to believe that a Barbie soundtrack album should have made for groundbreaking or era-defining art – but on a level of pure enjoyment, listening to a concept album about Barbie does wear thin very quickly. ![]() Hey Blondie, a swooning, Jack Johnson-esque number by Dominic Fike, finds the gen Z heart-throb falling head-over-heels for the doll herself, a bizarre concept made wryly funny by the fact that Fike cites the anti-sellout 90s as the era of rock that has had the biggest influence on his own music. “Hey Barbie / She’s so cool,” coos Lizzo over bouncy 80s soft-pop on Pink “She’s my best friend in the whole world,” sings Charli on the jagged, high-octane Speed Drive. The cherry on top of all this corporate synergy is the fact that most of the songs on Barbie the Album are about Barbie and Ken, giving many of the songs a strange, jingle-like quality. ![]()
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