Looking for something that isn’t Matchbox Twenty to play for your long-term long-distance low-commitment casual girlfriend on Christmas morning? You’re in luck: Barbie star Ryan Gosling and composers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt have unveiled Ken The EP.
The EP features four songs: the original (and hopefully Oscar nominated) “I’m Just Ken” from the highest-grossing film of the year, as well as three remixes, “I’m Just Ken (Merry Kristmas Barbie),” “I’m Just Ken (In My Feelings Acoustic)” and “I’m Just Ken (Purple Disco Machine Remix).” It’s no Dead Man’s Bones reunion, but it’ll do.
Barbie director and co-writer Greta Gerwig talked to Rolling Stone about the song’s origin. “I think if I had said, ‘I want you to sing and dance in this movie,’ [Gosling] would not have necessarily done that for me. But it was kind of that thing of boiling a lobster,” she said. “I think by the time he was singing and dancing, he didn’t even totally know how we had gotten there. But he’s so fabulous at it.”
She continued, “Mark Ronson talked a lot about glam-rock and Meat Loaf and the drama of that kind of song. And then Mark and his songwriting partner Andrew Wyatt wrote ‘I’m Just Ken.’ They didn’t even have all the lyrics. They just had a feeling and the skeleton and the lyric ‘I’m just Ken,’ and it just evolved from there.”
Barbie is available to watch on Max. You can also watch a video of the holiday remix above and listen to the EP below.
