“I don’t read a lot of scripts, but it was just everything I want in a movie,” Ronson recalls. Mark Ronson DJ’ing during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Silent Disco event at Lincoln Center in New York on JRoy Rochlin/Getty

They told him they needed at least the basis of a song for the showstopper in two weeks. Ronson Zoomed with the Barbie squad while they were in England prepping for production. That was when Oscar- and seven-time Grammy Award-winning producer and songwriter Mark Ronson ( A Star Is Born) got a text from his music-supervisor pal George Drakoulias. The Barbie team knew they needed two songs in particular as soon as possible: a showstopping pop number for a highly choreographed dance scene, and a big Eighties-style power ballad for Ken, played by Ryan Gosling. The label was a particularly strong partner for this project, having dominated the soundtrack market over the past several years, thanks to albums for Robbie’s Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey, as well as the Fast and the Furious franchise and the recent Daisy Jones & the Six. “This was a really competitive project in our landscape, but we’ve been tracking Barbie for a long time,” says Kevin Weaver, Atlantic Records’ West Coast president. “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,” adds Robbie.Ītlantic nabbed the project early, working closely with Gerwig and her co-writer husband, Noah Baumbach. Many of the film’s scenes have highly specific musical cues that she was seeking, which means she needed a team on board from the beginning to make the vision come alive. The Barbie soundtrack is one of the most important weapons in writer-director Greta Gerwig’s arsenal. “Lizzo’s lyrics are just so funny,” says main Barbie Margot Robbie, “and add an extra layer of comedy that I thought was quite genius.” Soundtracking it is “Pink,” by Lizzo, a song that describes exactly what Barbie is experiencing onscreen - a campy touch of Eighties TV tropes to build out her pastel world.

The next day, it all goes terribly, terribly wrong. And there’s the doting love of Ken, whose existence is mostly an accessory to Barbie’s. Barbie opens with the world’s favorite doll having the perfect day: She has her perfect world full of other perfect Barbies who may look and dress differently but act exactly the same.

Birds of prey soundtrack trailer