Songwriters Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt talk Ellen Peirson-Hagger through their creative process on writing the much memed, self-deprecating, Oscar-nominated power ballad ‘I’m Just Ken’.
When Mark Ronson started working on the music for Barbie, he thought it would be fun to have some dolls with him in the studio. The British music producer and ‘Uptown Funk’ writer went to Toys ’R’ Us, where he picked up a few Barbies. But he couldn’t see any Kens. He asked a sales assistant where he could find them, and they told him that the shop didn’t stock them. ‘Which is the whole point of the film!’ Ronson says, laughing. ‘Nobody goes in to buy a Ken doll, which is so poignant.’
In Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which after its release in July 2023 became the most financially successful female-directed film ever, women call the shots. But for all that Barbie dominates – in the world of the film, and in Toys ’R’ Us – it was Ken’s song that became the soundtrack’s biggest talking point. ‘I’m Just Ken’, which Ronson co-wrote with Andrew Wyatt, is a tongue-in-cheek ballad that begins as a sombre reflection on masculinity, takes in a beach duel and ends as an all-male dance number. Ryan Gosling performed the song in his role as Ken, the wannabe boyfriend of Margot Robbie’s Barbie. But it wasn’t always a given that the Canadian actor would sing it.
Barbie (2023)
Wyatt, an American writer and producer best known for his work with the Swedish electro-pop group Miike Snow, was initially ‘a little bit sceptical’ at the idea of a Barbie movie – he always is, ‘any time it’s a big brand film’. But once he read Gerwig’s script, which she co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, he was on board. ‘There was a grace to it.’
Ronson and Wyatt eventually soundtracked and scored the entire film. Originally Gerwig had asked them to write just two songs: ‘a Barbie song’ (which became Dua Lipa’s disco track ‘Dance the Night’) and ‘a Ken song’. Her brief comprised ‘just a couple of bullet points’ for each. Ronson quickly understood that Ken is a ‘tragic character. And it’s much easier to write a melancholy song than a happy song, because it gets more out of you’. The first line that came to him became the chorus: ‘I’m just Ken/ Anywhere else, I’d be a 10.’ When the song was shared ahead of the film’s release, the internet went wild. ‘But I wasn’t thinking: that’s funny. I was thinking: God, that’s so sad. It wasn’t that I wanted to write a meme. It just makes sense: he is a 10.’ Ronson played what he had to Wyatt, who wrote the verse and other classic lines including ‘My name’s Ken, and I’m enough/And I’m great at doin’ stuff.’ They then finished the song together.
Barbie (2023)
It wasn’t until Gosling heard the track that he agreed to sing it. ‘Ryan digs the song,’ Gerwig told the writers. In fact, Ronson remembers, ‘he said it “resonated on a deep level”. I was like: “Is he being ironic?”’
From then on, the song expanded. Gerwig wanted it ‘to go to 11’, Ronson says. ‘So, OK, what do we do? Transpose it, send it up another 20 beats per minute and give it this crazy, pounding energy.’ The pair were writing for a Mattel movie, but they only wanted to make music ‘that we would be psyched to play for our peers’. ‘Is this still bad-ass? Would I play this to Josh Homme [from Queens of the Stone Age]? And then we saw some of Jennifer [White]’s insane choreography, and they’re plié-ing and jeté-ing and whatever else across the screen’ – and they knew they had to ‘turn it up’ even more.
Barbie (2023)
The final song is an Eighties-style, prog-rock power ballad, complete with thrashing guitar solos from Guns N’ Roses’ Slash. Prog rock has ‘a certain grandiosity mixed with a sensitivity’, Wyatt explains, which was just right for Gosling’s hyper-masculine yet self-conscious Ken. ‘The format allows you to merge different movements and tempos and key changes. You can throw in massive amounts of strings, and the chorus is a perfect catchbasin for everything but the kitchen sink.’
‘I’m Just Ken’ is nominated for Best Original Song at the 2024 Oscars. It’s a prize that Ronson and Wyatt won previously for ‘Shallow’, performed by Lady
Gaga and Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born (2018). Tonally, the tracks are worlds apart, but Ronson sees a connection between both processes. He was proud of ‘Shallow’ as a song, ‘but it was the way that Bradley embedded it into the tragic arc of those two characters that really injected it with an emotional gravitas. In the same way, what Greta did with our song in the film, and what Ryan did with it in his performance, imbued it with the kind of thing that, as a songwriter, you dream of. Ryan performed the song with his entire body, like the microphone was also a film camera.’
Behind the scenes on ‘I’m Just Ken’
Ronson and Wyatt are glad that when they were writing, they had no idea how huge a pop-culture phenomenon Barbie would be. ‘If we had felt any of that pressure, we would have second-guessed ourselves,’ Ronson says. ‘I don’t think we would have got anything near as weird as “I’m Just Ken”.’
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