How Lizzo’s ‘Barbie’ Song ‘Pink’ Shaped the Beginning of the Movie: ‘Everyone Suddenly Got the Tone’

Lizzo’s hilarious and catchy Barbie song “Pink” set the tone for Barbie Land.

The blockbuster film’s soundtrack features hitmakers like Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and more, but the filmmakers explained that the tune co-written by Lizzo, 35, used early in the movie glued together the overall Barbie feel.

“When Lizzo came on, she basically wrote and riffed on top of what [composers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt] had written as a base,” director Greta Gerwig told IndieWire. “She knew exactly what was funny about [the film], and what she was doing with her lyrics was the same kind of humor that we were doing.”

The song plays as audiences see Barbie (Margot Robbie) go through her morning routine. Says Gerwig, 39, “When she was literally singing what you’re seeing on screen, it was so deeply funny and all of sudden, as a result, it felt like it all went together.”

Barbie editor Nick Houy added to IndieWire that Lizzo’s song “suddenly changed the way people saw the beginning” of the movie.

“It solved all of the problems we were having, which weren’t crazy, but I remember everyone suddenly got the tone of the movie immediately in a way they hadn’t before,” said Houy.

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Ronson told NME about making the soundtrack, recalling how Gerwig instantly “loved” “Pink.”

“Greta loved it so much that she ran out of the room and played it for Margot over the phone,” said Ronson, 47.

He added of the overall soundtrack, “The thing I learned very, very quickly doing the score for Barbie is that you’re always serving the picture. You’re always serving the emotion. You have to turn off all the things you know about making pop and rock and soul music for the last 30 years. Yes, it needs to be beautiful, but sometimes you just need to get the f— out the way.”

Warner Bros.; Karwai Tang/WireImage

Ronson told Variety that he and Gerwig “had a wish list” of artists they wanted for the film’s soundtrack.

“It made sense that it was female-heavy, and then we just kind of went from the top. Greta is has so much good will because of her movies, and she’s just so cool,” he said. “There wasn’t anybody that didn’t come back right from the jump, excited like to see a little bit of a film — and this was even before the first trailer.”

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

“We’d show artists little scenes that we thought would give them the best sense of the film — you know, either we’d sit on these Zooms and we have a super-private, secure server or occasionally we’d get them in a screening room and give them a really good idea of where we wanted their song to be or whose voice they’d be speaking from and the emotion of the story they’re telling.”

Added Ronson, “These artists are all, like, super clever and great lyricists, so we really were spoiled — like, a week or two later, ‘Hey, what do you guys think of this?’ And it would just be incredible.”

Barbie is in theaters now.

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Source: HIS Education