I’m Just Ken Was Not Supposed to Even Be in Barbie, But Became International Hit

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling became an international hit before it was even released. The world went wild for this bright-pink adventure comedy, and for a good reason: Barbie turned out to be a fantastic movie with just the right proportion of goofiness, plot, character growth, and social message.

While there were quite a few memorable moments in Greta Gerwig’s latest movie, it was the I’m Just Ken song and sequence that truly enchanted the audience.

It relays the internal struggles and existential crisis of Ryan Gosling’s Ken while sounding great, looking good, and being the perfect track for the ongoing Ken vs. Ken war.

I’m Just Ken went on to become not only the highlight of the movie but a standalone hit, as well: by this time, it has already amassed well over 67M plays on Spotify, and the number keeps growing. But apparently, the best part of Barbie was almost not in the movie at all as the music producer Mark Ronson revealed recently.

“[I’m Just Ken] went from being this song that was maybe gonna be played somewhere in the film to this song that they built this epic battle around. So we're essentially scoring 11 minutes just around the Ken song,” Ronson shared in the recent behind-the-scenes featurette to Barbie.

Despite the initial uncertainty regarding I’m Just Ken, Greta Gerwig absolutely fell in love with it after listening to the original short version and decided to extend it and make it the focal point of the movie. And it worked out beautifully, needless to say!

It’s kind of wild to think that the one thing we all left the theaters within our heads was initially considered a non-essential and secondary part of Barbie. We’re glad that in the end, the creators changed their minds and added it — otherwise, what else would them boys with real Ken-ergy be singing when they’re feeling down?

Source: Barbie Featurette via Vudu