- 2023-12-21
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MUSIC
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Ryan Gosling & Mark Ronson Team Up for Christmas Version of “I'm Just Ken” from The Motion Picture “Barbie”
Canadian actor Ryan Gosling and British-American record producer Mark Ronson teamed up to release Christmas version of “I'm Just Ken” on December 20, 2023.
The song featured on a new EP “Ken The EP”, including the original version, Christmas version, acoustic version, and remix version of the song.
Also, the song is featured on the motion picture “Barbie” soundtrack “Barbie the Album”, which was released back in July.
The track was written and produced by Andrew Wyatt and Mark Ronson.
The accompanying music video features Ryan Gosling, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt in the studio.
The song is nominated for Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 2024 Grammy Awards.
On the category, in addition to “I'm Just Ken”, Dua Lipa's “Dance the Night”, Billie Eilish's “What Was I Made For?”, and Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice's “Barbie World” are nominated from the soundtrack.- Mark Ronson said of the song, “We first recorded this song back in March 2022 at a studio in North London called Eastcote. I'd never met Ryan & was a little starstruck when he walked into this no-frills studio where the Clash once made records. Let's be real, I'd been enjoying his work for many years - he's a few cuts above, ya know? We had a quick, awkward 'get to know you' cup of tea & headed to the control room. I was informed I had 2 hours before he had to return to a grueling rehearsal on set, so I was already feeling up against it. Andrew & I had written a song with different sections, a number of modulations and the vocal was pretty unhinged at moments. Well, it only took 2 or 3 warm up takes for me to realize not only was he going to be able to handle the vocal but it was going to far exceed anything Andrew and I could have hoped for. Not only did he bring a broken falsetto, a hefty growl, & everything in between, he brought the emotional resonance of a great actor who'd been living in a role for the past 6 months...after that, we didn't see each other again for 18 months but of course, I was excited to see the world fall in love with his performance & know to some small degree, our song was a part of it. Cut to this past Nov where he fully surprised me at an awards event with one of the nicest/funniest intros i could've dreamed of. From then, we began to text & talk about music. I told him i fantasized about us performing the song live, so we started to dream what that might sound like. I was also dying to show the song in a different context - he demanded I go 'Full Ronson' with the arrangement (which i took to mean 2007 motown/wall of sound-obsessed me). Anyway, i sent this version to him last Tues and he dug it & it sounded so f***ing xmas that we were like, 'man, can we get this out in a week?!' Since I'm the person who throws on Stevie's 'Someday at Christmas' the day after Thanksgiving, this appealed to me greatly. So he rerecorded the vocals and here we are, a week later serving up this version that we love with about 5 days til no one wants to hear a xmas record, but sometimes u have to do it 4 fun (& maybe a little for Barbie).”
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He continued, “We proudly present the Ken EP! There's the xmas version I wrote about yesterday, a super 'in my feelings' acoustic version that puts a lump in my throat and an awesome Purple Disco Machine remix which I asked him to make back in Summer but we didn't have a proper reason to put it out til now. I'm very excited about all this because i love this song and the wonderful man who sung it. And all praises to the most high, Greta Gerwig whose glorious vision of a world run by women still carved out seven minutes for a song about all the emo boys who struggle with how to express their feelings.” - source : Apple Music
