Switched on Pop - Barbie and the plasticity of pop

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

This past week, the film Barbie opened nationwide to massive success – and with it came a soundtrack, executive produced by Mark Ronson. Functioning as both a companion to the movie and a stand-alone collection of hits, the album features everyone from Dua Lipa to reggaeton star Karol G to K-Pop group FIFTY FIFTY. This episode of Switched on Pop, we take a look at the singles from the soundtrack and see how well they embody the ethos of Barbie: plastic and all.  Check out our 2021 interview with Mark Ronson (about Ginuwine’s “Pony”) here. We reference “vibe snatching” in this episode. Take a listen to our episode breaking down the phenomenon here. For more on Billie Eilish’s “No Time to Die,” check out our Bond episode from October 2021 here. Songs Discussed:  Dua Lipa – Dance The Night Billie Eilish – What Was I Made For? PinkPantheress – Angel FIFTY FIFTY, Kaliii – Barbie Dreams Janet Jackson – Together Again FIFTY FIFTY – Cupid The Cardigans – Lovefool Charli XCX – Speed Drive Billie Eilish – No Time To Die Aqua – Barbie Girl Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, Aqua – Barbie World Karol G, Aldo Ranks – WATATI Jul – My World Ludacris, Wiz Khalifa, Jeremih, Cashmere Cat – Party Girls Ava Max – Not Your Barbie Girl Ava Max – My Head & My Heart A Touch Of Class – Around the World (La La La La La) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm producer Rianna Cruz. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. So, Charlie, I feel like this summer we've approached the closest thing to a monocultural moment. And I feel like that comes in the form of Greta Gerwig and her film Barbie. Yeah, we are recording this. episode even before the film has been released, and yet we've just been inundated with Barbie

messaging. Barbie's inescapable. Barbie is all around us. Barbie is omnipotent. But the part where we come in is that any big movie these days comes with a soundtrack. Right. Like Black Panther or Spider-Man, you can't just make a movie. You have to have a whole album that goes along with it. Exactly. And the Black Panther soundtrack was executive produced by Kendrick Lamar. Metro Booman produced the Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse soundtrack. This soundtrack for Barbie was executive produced by none other than Mark Ronson. Ah, yes, Mark Ronson, friend of the show. He's been on, known for his retro throwback productions with Amy Winehouse and Bruno Mars, etc., etc. Interesting to figure out what this Barbie soundtrack is going to sound like in the hands of Mark Ronson.

Well, the soundtrack is kind of who's who of popular music right now. We have Duolipa. To Niki Minaj. And I'm bad like the Barbie. I'm a doll, but I still want to party. To Carol G. This soundtrack variety, to me, is assumedly working to capture all aspects of the Barbie experience. Huh.

Since the movie isn't out yet, maybe we're not. we can think about this soundtrack as a standalone object as pop songs. You say that they reflect the Barbie experience. What is that for you? I feel like the Barbie experience is whatever you want it to be. You know, like to look at the Barbie experience, we got to look at what is Barbie. And I think Barbie contains a duality. You know, Barbie is a commodity, but also close personal friend.

She's everything you want her to be. but also inherently plastic and immutable. And Barbie is on track to be the biggest movie of the summer, but also, you know, represents Hollywood's strategy of milking a piece of IP for all it's worth. You know, there's dualities within Barbie and, of course, by extension, the Barbie experience. Barbie can be anything you just have to use your imagination

And the imagination of this soundtrack under the executive production of Mark Ronson seems to be expansive. Exactly. And that expansive plasticity of Barbie lends itself appropriately to pop music, which similarly to Barbie is founded on artifice and commodity and a product's relationship with the public. But also joy and fun and all the things that we love about pop music. Lots of good things. I don't want to be like a doomer on the podcast. Lots of good things too. I'm just saying that both Barbie and pop music are products designed to be consumed by a mass audience, right? So how do we judge whether or not a Barbie soundtrack is effective or frankly good?

I think it comes down to its ability to be plastic in all its meanings. And as we'll see, there's lots of different types of plastic, and some fit the Barbie aesthetic more than others. Let's look at some of the songs on the Barbie soundtrack and see how well they look to embody this Barbie ethos. First, we have Barbie Dreams by 50-50 featuring Kali. This to me is like buffed, shiny plastic. This is plastic so reflective you can see yourself in it.

It's maximalist. It's over the top. It's not trying to be anything but exactly what it is. Right. And for the same reasons, this song to me is Barbie. It sums up the ethos most effectively. It's fun. It's like you said, plastic.

It is perfect pop music founding itself on a sample of the classic together again by Janet Jackson. I feel like our reporting from last summer about everything being vibe snatching, just reinterpolating prior work. That seems to be the pop strategy. And always the question is how well do they reinterpret the original? I think Janet Jackson's together again is sort of like hollowed ground. But I think they've worked the melody in a really interesting way. I called 50-50s version maximalist. And for me, it's maximalist both because it sounds like it's like the 2010s, pop.

remix of Janet Jackson, but I think particularly because they take the chorus melody and they make it the main riff that just repeats over and over and over again. So it becomes this sort of like confectious over the top, overly sweet kind of feeling, which is just exactly what a Barbie song ought to be doing. Yeah, I think together again is one of the world's perfect melodies. It's sweet. And the feelings that I get from it are like, a sense of yearning, right, without being particularly cloying or over the top with it. By using the melody here, but shifting it, the song becomes more exciting and more youthful and fits well for Barbie while also keeping the beauty that made the melody great in the first place.

And also fitting for 50-50, who are a K-pop girl group, it feels like they're really sort of leaning into the cultural expectations. of the genre, while also actually making great commentary on the barbiness of this music. We've talked about 50-50 on the show before because of their song, Cupid, which blew up on TikTok and peaked in Billboard's top 20. And Charlie, I think you called it the updated version of Love Fool by the Cardiff. Can we hear that? Yeah, 50-50 seemed to be leaning a lot into nostalgia. For me, Cupid is very much in the style of Love Fool. by the cardigans from the 90s.

So this group seems to be quite good at borrowing from pre-existing IP, which makes 50-50 probably the right group to be working on the Barbie soundtrack, which itself is rehashed IP. And so I think it's fitting. I feel like 50-50 works in a number of ways, because they're good at using these interpolations in their music. But also judging from Cupid and Barbie Dreams, I feel like the group is really good at harnessing a sense of childlike wonder.

and excitement in their lyrics. And Barbie, no matter what, you know, the film's PR is saying and the PG-13 rating it has, Barbie is a product designed for children. You know, so this is really smart in connecting the movie of Barbie to the soundtrack, to the object of Barbie, to the people that engage with it. You know, it speaks to everybody. And it feels like, you know, perfect synergy on all accounts. I also think K-pop fits really well with the Barbie brand because of the sort of

artifice and plasticity of Barbie, as we previously talked about, I feel like K-pop is an industry that is so carefully poured over and curated, resulting in a product, you know, the music and the bands and the groups that come out of it. Right, they're often called idol groups. And I think that we can think of Barbie the doll as a also kind of idol that so many people had shrines to in their closet. And it works. And I feel like the song contains multitudes, much like Barbie herself. But I think there's another song on the soundtrack that invokes the multitudes of Barbie more effectively, and that is Angel by Pink Pantherus. Wow. Okay, first of all, what kind of plastic is this? This is for me the, like, plastic-y, perfectly groomed hair on Barbie's head. It's just, there's a sheen

to it. I love Pink Panther's voice in the same way. She really does this. She really does this. her voice in autotune, but it somehow actually evokes more emotion. She sings this very quiet volume and something about this near whisper with the auto tune. I feel very pulled into the music. The thing that really stunned me on this song, though, are those fiddles. I mean, we've got like some kind of Irish real music. It's giving Titanic. Like what is going on with this song? It's got a two-step beat. It's got Pink Pantheras. It's got these fiddles. So bizarre. I've never heard anything quite like it. Yeah, this is a weird one. There's a lot of different elements at play here. I mean, right from the get-go, there's like an odd evoking of nostalgia right from the drumbeat, you know,

the minute the track starts. It kind of comes in like a memory, you know, something ephemeral that you're feeling in real time because it filters in and out. Yeah, it's like it's hazy coming into vision, but then you're losing it, slipping away. And of course, like you mentioned, and there's the fiddle. You know, Pink Panthers is an English singer, so it makes sense that maybe she's been exposed to this sort of Irish fiddle music, and I've never heard this kind of crossover,

especially in a more U.S.-centric pop soundtrack world. What a bizarre mashup to bring. There's also these weird Mortal Kombat, like Oofs used as percussion throughout the track. Mortal Kombat-esque. So putting all these elements together, the track works super well and weirdly enough fits the Barbie ethos in a more abstract way. It plays kind of like to the open world's imagination qualities that a toy like Barbie can emulate. Oh, you know, okay, now I know what kind of plastic this is.

This is like every kind of plastic in your toy chest because you don't keep your Barbies separate from all the rest of your toys. They intermingle. And it feels like this song is intermingling between genres in the same way that you might play with your Barbie dolls and Teenage Mutin Ninja Turtles at the exact same time. Right. It's like if Barbie is in the countryside but is also playfighting other Barbies, you know, like it's like multiple, there's multiple elements at play. Okay. So Pink Panther is giving us some major Barbie vibes in a way that I have never previously thought about Barbie. Well, maybe we can pivot to some of the more classical Barbie interpretations.

Some of the songs on the Barbie soundtrack really apply, right, like 50-50, but also some are stretches, you know? I'm thinking of a song like Dance the Night by Duolipa. I don't like to get mean, but this feels like mass-manufactured plastic that you would find in a milk crate. Yeah. It's just that we've been in this pop disco revival. era since at least 2013's Random Access Memories by Daft Punk. We did a whole mini-series on it. And I feel like disco has never died.

It always finds new ways of reviving itself. But I feel like there's been so much of playing to the cliches of disco, right? The horn sections, the string sections, the four-to-the-floor kick drums. I just want to hear something new. And this one could have been off of Duolipa's 2020. the album Future Nostalgia, but the song is neither feeling futuristic nor particularly nostalgic. It just feels like it could be on a playlist of disco music to shop at Kmart too. Yeah, it really was giving future nostalgia B-side to me.

But funny enough, Mark Ronson said in an interview with Vulture that he didn't write the song for Dua. He wrote the music and then Dua wrote the song with Caroline Aalin. But even then, despite the song not being for Dua Lipa, It feels firmly Duolipa, and it doesn't give me anything new, anything exciting, and even inherently Barbie. I will say, this song maybe succeeds the most of what we've heard so far as an independent radio hit.

I feel like this doesn't have to be connected to the world of Barbie. It feels like just, yeah, a Duolipa B-side song could very happily sit next to levitating, don't start now, all those big hits. Well, what really disappoints me is that the beauty of the soundtrack is the left turns that these artists are doing and taking. Like, look at Pink Panther's, right? And that's an exciting take on her sound that I haven't heard before. And even when the artists on the soundtrack are still firmly within their own bag and their own genre, it's still working in the Barbie theme, you know? Like, take the track Speed Drive by Charlie XX, which is also on the Barbie sound.

soundtrack. Like, yes, that is a Charlie X-E-X song, you know, like unmistakably. She's written songs about cars titled Vroom, Vroom, Crash, White Mercedes, Backseat, and Porsche, just to name a few. So a song called Speed Drive definitely fits within her work, yes. And I mean, the track is about driving. And of course, Barbie has her own car. She has a lot of cars, including Corvette, I think she has a Jeep, things like that. Right, right. It's also fitting that the Charlie XEXEXE. X song is a interpolation of the song Mickey, which could have been the song playing in Barbie's car, or moreover, I feel like you could have walked through the aisles of Toyser Us in the 1980s and 90s and hear Mickey playing in the background as you shop in the all pink aisle for Barbie. Yeah, so clearly Charlie XX is taking the source material and adapting it for her song. Duolipa for me is not doing that.

There's not even any Barbie references on the track. There's no references to dolls, toys, her car, anything of that nature. And the only thing I could even associate with Barbie is this one line in the back half of the song. I didn't catch it. It's I'll still keep the party running, not one hair out of place. Thinking of like plastic, untouchable Barbie doll hair. But even then, exactly, Charlie, it's a stretch. You miss it. It's a simple pop song that is not related to Barbie in any sense of the word.

You know, with these movie pop albums, the songs are sometimes working as soundtracking. They're sometimes working as a commentary on the film itself. And sometimes they're just more standalone songs that maybe you shouldn't have fit in anyway, but, you know, they needed to get Dulepa in there. And I just feel like this falls into that final category. Yeah, I feel like Dance the Night was used as, you know, a big lead single to put in the trailer. and pull people in and kind of get that cross-radio promotion. But at the end of the day, like, it let me down. And there's another big song on the soundtrack that also let me down.

And I'm sorry to say it, but it's Billy Elish's What Was I Made for? I feel like we're hearing Matt Black Plastic, which has been melted in the sun. This is a really sad ballad, which is appropriate for Billy Eilish. She gives us a lot of those style songs. And I understand that the film is trying to alter our expectations of the kinds of feelings and experiences that Barbie can have. But you said you were let down by this song. Yeah. And I think generally, you kind of touched on this before, but I feel like there's three characteristics of a good movie soundtrack song.

You know, it has to serve as soundtracking, of course, or even like the end credits, if we're really stretching it. Yeah. It has to represent the themes of the film. and also has to function as a stand-alone song. What lets me down here, you know, if you listen to the lyrics and really think about it, it feels so connected to the movie that I think it fails at that third qualification to function as a stand-alone song. Yeah.

It can't stand on its own. Yeah, like the lyrics, taken a drive, I was an ideal, looked so alive, turns out I'm not real. Taking a drive. Just something you paid for, what was I made for? You've got taken a drive. We previously established, we know all Barbies like to have an accessory car. The commentary on beauty and expectations is important, and yet the sort of overly saccharine,

just something you paid for, what was I made for, it really does evoke having bought a toy in the toy aisle and brought it home and maybe being disappointed with your purchase or something, but it feels hard to decouple the Barbiness from those words. When I listen to this track, I can hear exactly the moment in which this song is placed in the Barbie movie. And I haven't even seen the movie. And, you know, it's like, truth be told, whether or not this is true. But I hear this song soundtracking the sort of all is lost beat of the hero's journey at the end of the second act,

where Barbie walks around dejected and wonders what her purpose is. You know, like it fits so accurately in that moment that I can't really hear it outside of the context of Barbie. It's over-succeeding at soundtracking and perhaps not fulfilling your requirement of needing to stand alone a bit. By highlighting the vocal so presently and using lyrics that are so Barbie-related, it just can't escape the film. It's not plastic enough in some ways. I mean, it's disappointing because Billy Eilish has done soundtracks before two great success. She even won an Oscar for No Time to Die, her James Bond theme. There's just no time to die.

One of my favorite episodes of the podcast was analyzing this song, and it does contain within it exactly the James Bond themes, but somehow subverts them just enough that I'm happy to hear it when it's on the radio. Right, and that's another example of, like, Billy Eilish writing a song for use as IP, you know? Right. And of course, Bond isn't Barbie, and I think everybody has a much closer connection with Barbie than James Bond.

But nonetheless, she has experience writing these songs to function both as things that could be played on the radio, but also in and outside of the movies that they're from. With what was I made for, it's a song that's like packaged as like personal and handcrafted, but it ends up sounding so commercial because of how connected it is to Barbie as an entity.

Oh my gosh, it's almost like artificial flowers. You know, it's like plastic flowers. Yes, yes. Oh, wow, look those beautiful flowers in your room. Oh, wait, never mind. They're not real. Right. And that's the vibe that I'm getting here from the Billy Eilish track.

Okay, so there's some songs here you feel really captured the plastic of Barbie and others that perhaps are a bit too rigid and don't bend enough as plastic to succeed in both the film and outside of it. Yes, but I feel like, we're glossing over a really important part of the Barbie musical canon, Charlie. What's that? I think the most important song in the Barbie canon, how could we forget, is Aqua's Barbie Girl. I feel like Barbie Girl is arguably as important to the Barbie universe as the doll itself. This song, in many ways, defined what Barbie means.

Exactly. And we'll get to talking about it after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Ready?

Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from me. and top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app.

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When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. The definitive Barbie song is Barbie Girl by the Danish-Norwegian Europop band Aqua. No doubt.

You know it, whether you'll be. love it or you hate it, it's iconic. I personally love it. I think it's perfect and fits so appropriately in this plastic Barbie canon that we've established. Yeah, it's pure Euro pop, which is fun itself, maybe a bit plastic and artificial. Definitely. But emphasis on you're not having to think too hard about it. But the song is also, maybe it is thinking hard about Barbie, right? It's commentary. Like, The music could be as if Madonna's material girl were done over Ace of Bass's beautiful life. Wow. With the cartoonishness of the Witch Doctor songs.

It is kind of a meta mashup in its own way, like many of the Barbie soundtrack songs. And it gives voice to Barbie, I think, like, like, this film is trying to do, while commenting on the artificial nature and pre-established imagery that we have about what Barbie can actually be. Yes. So the song came out in 1997 and understandably so is inexplicably tied to the legend of Barbie. That same year in 1997, Mattel even tried to sue MCA records, which was Aqua's label in North America, claiming that the third song, which at that point had hit number one in 14 countries, turned Barbie into a quote,

unquote, blonde bimbo. Wait, so they're saying the song did that, not Mattel? The song, specifically the song. So like whatever tens, hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing spent on Barbie over the decades, didn't contribute whatsoever. Not out the window. The kind of plastic-y sexualization of Barbie in this song is the thing that put it over the top. That's their argument.

Yeah, I mean, I could kind of see where they're coming from. the singer in the song representing a character of Barbie even says it explicitly. So it's not entirely out of left field. So she says, I'm a blonde bimbo girl in a fantasy world. So I mean, they're pulling directly from the song, I guess. Yeah, but it's sung with such jest. It definitely feels like a parody of Barbie. It's the most over-the-top valley girl nasal approach to the vocal,

and it feels like a Broadway performance commenting on Barbiness more than a pop song using preexisting IP to make a hit. Right. And you're right on the money because the lawsuit was eventually dismissed in 2002 by being designated through the Court of Appeals as a parody. So it is protected by the First Amendment because of exactly that. It's over the top and is sort of intentional. emotionally obnoxious, framing the song as a sort of just conversation between Barbie and Ken, both functioning as characters. And I want to give it some credit for, I think, capturing the Barbie ethos better than any song we've heard so far with the lyric, Imagination, Life is Your Creation. Mattel could take that as a slogan, and that could be the new Barbie line. imagination, life is your creation. We could even apply that statement to other songs that we've heard today, like Angel by Pink

Panthers or the 50-50 track Barbie Dreams. Those really function in the sort of ethos of imagination, life is your creation. So yeah, Barbie Girl manages to get Barbie in the best way. It's plastic. It's fun for any age. And it's also disposable pop music that leaves a lasting impact. And for the record, Mattel even came around to Barbie Girl by Aqua, licensing it in 2009 for a commercial where they changed the words. Nope, not as good.

Not as good. I understand. It's the G-rated version. They need to make that. I get it. It's like Kids' Bob. Yeah, the Kids'Bop version of Barbie Girl. And the Mattel commercial isn't the only song to kind of reinterpret Barbie Girl.

Awkish track and the melody on the song is so good. It's lasted as maybe the most defining piece of culture about Barbie that isn't the doll itself. And we could see Barbie Girl present both on and off the Barbie movie soundtrack to varying degrees of success. First looking on the Barbie soundtrack, the most obvious use of Barbie Girl is on the song Barbie World by Ice Spice and The Ultimate Barbecue. but Nikki Minaj. Right. Nicky Minaj fans are called Barbes. Got it. And I'm bad like the Barbie. I'm a doll, but I still want to party. Pink felt like I'm ready to bend.

I'm a 10, so I'm pulling a can. Like Jazzy, Stacey, Nikki. All of the Barbies is pretty. All of the Barbies is bad. It girls. And we ain't playing tag. I'm sorry, but hard no. Like, I feel like if the Mattel commercial of Barbie Girl is the kids' bopp version, this is like

the hard Bob version. This is, let's make it more real, putting some rappers on it, making it more contemporary, making it hypersexualized, which is extending the IP and imagery of the original Barbie Girl. But like, the thing that makes Barbie Girl work is that it sounds plastic and fake and obnoxious. Barbie World feels like a drill style update to Barbie Girl. It was remix that I never needed. Yeah, I mean, I think a good part at the very, very least, giving credit where credit is due, there's explicit references to Barbie and Barbie culture writ large. Take this part in Nikki's verse.

It's funny. I mean, maybe it's not that serious, right? But it does feel like it's Barbie with some attitude. Yeah, I don't think it's that serious at the end of the day. I kind of like this song. I think it grows on me because it's pop music at its most distilled form. there's nothing to really dissect or even think critically about

you know it's just like goes in one ear makes me you know kind of bob around a bit and then goes out the other you know like there really is nothing to like parse here yeah lines like we got bars but we ain't bawling out in that pink Ferrari we peeling out yeah it's just kind of like Barbie imagery

boisterous you know over the top fun rap all right I guess I have no problem with the song but I still think Barbie girls is far superior. Well, yes, absolutely. It's the standard. But there's also another track on the Barbie soundtrack that's more of an implicit nod to Aqua and Barbie Girl

from a song that you really wouldn't expect. And that's Watati by reggaeton star Carol G and Aldo Ranks. This is like sampling without sampling. What do you mean? Well, it doesn't have the actual song in it. There's no clear chords or melody taken from Barbie Girl, but it exists in the musical universe of Barbie Girl if made like in Puerto Rico. Yeah, so, you know, on paper, it's a pretty standard reggaeton dance track. And I don't think

Mark Ronson touched this track at all. He's not on the production credits or nothing. I think this song is my personal favorite on the soundtrack, because to me, like you kind of said, It's sampling without sampling. It feels the most like Aqua's Barbie girl in a kind of off the wall winking way. What the song does well and what keeps it interesting is the framing of the song as a duet between Carol G and Aldo Ranks with the girl voice playing off of like the gruff man voice that is also present on the Aqua song. So listen to the beginning of Watate. It's a direct nod and even anachronistic one because there's a telephone ring and then you can hear someone picking up an actual telephone. Like you can hear it coming off the hook.

This is not a mobile phone. This is not an iPhone. And I feel like Aqua starts in the exact same way with a similar machismo baritone, chesty voice. Hi, you know. Oh, is there no telephone call? In the Barbie universe, it's like somebody pulling up in a car and then like cat calling Barbie, you know. I could have swore there was a telephone call. My gosh.

Wait, let's hear the whole thing. But even here, there's still sound effects used in a similar way. You know, Barbie Girl has like the sound of the car pulling up and the sound of the car driving away. The way that Watatei uses the, you know, phone and the picking up the phone and the putting down the phone. Oh, my God, but you're making me realize now. I'm sorry we have to go back for a second. Speed drive by Charlie XEX does the exact same thing with the car, but uses it as the transition moment from the pre-chorus into the chorus.

Check that out. Yeah, it's that revving of the engine. Yeah, yeah. So Carol G, they're instead doing it by almost like feels like you're picking up a phone from the 90s, referencing the sort of fully sound universe of the Barbie girl song. Totally. And the Carol Gialdo ranks track brings something that the Nicki Minaj Ice Spice track Barbie World can't really. Watate is like fun and exciting, you know? It captures the sort of carefree ethos of the Barbie spirit. It's totally fun. And just like Barbie girls, got this really grating, plastic-y-sounding lead sound. It's sort of a fake horn.

It's grating, but it works. So even though Wata-Dade doesn't use the Barbie Girl melody explicitly, Aqua has their fingerprints all over the Carol G track. But the Barbie Girl melody is so simple that it lends itself to being interpolated over and over again throughout music. It's sampled in 49 songs, according to who. sampled. And of course, with that popularity, there's as many flops as there are bops. You know, not everything can be what that day and Barbie dreams and the gold standard of Barbie inflected

tracks. Have you listened to all of these? Yeah, I've done my time in Barbie Purgatory listening to these songs over and over and over again. Tough assignment. Tough, but not impossible. I found a few examples that take the Barbie girl melody. Let's first look at the song My World by Jewel. J-U-L-J-U-L, not J-E-W-E-L, the great 90s singer. French rap. Yeah, okay, French rap. Need to emphasize that before researching, I had never heard of this song, of this artist.

But apparently the artist, J-U-L, is a French rapper who apparently is the biggest record seller in the history of French rap. He's like French rap's Drake, you know? We should be paying attention. My gosh. Wow. Okay. How do you feel about the song? I don't like it.

Sorry to the French rap fans out there, but this is just not for me. I think like the other examples that we've talked about that incorporate Barbie Girl kind of, kind of. of pare down the annoyingness to keep it palatable. Here on my world, the track with the auto tune, with the interpolation, skewing too much into annoying for me to fully kind of jump on board. The melody coupled with the instrumentation feels like a bastardized version of like a tinny music box, you know, like that you like play and it comes out of a toy. So in a way, it kind of can be brought back to Barbie maybe it's playing on the radio

in the Barbie Corvette Mobile Yeah but that wind-up creepy toy sound It feels more like existential soundtrack music To a thriller And I don't know

My French is very bad now But it doesn't feel like it's Capturing Barbiness Like it's using the melody for its hookiness, but not for its meaning. Yeah, the word Plastique is in there, but I'm going to have to go do some deeper translation later. Well, similarly, on the wrong side of Barbie Girl history,

we have Party Girls by Ludacris, Wis Caliphah, Jeremiah, and Kashmir Cat. Are you serious? I've never heard of this song. I, no. Nope, hate it. I mean, I like the beat. The beat is actually really interesting, but where Barbie girl comments on the sexualization of Barbiness, this song is just pure male gaze. No one needs it. Yeah, it makes me feel kind of gross and like skeeby.

Like listening to it and using that gross. I'm not a fan. This is also pretty terrible. And what I'm realizing is that the song, I think, that Barbie girl is used in is most likely to succeed. when the track is in the same goofy conversation as the source text. You know, like, that's why, like, Barbie World, the Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice song, maybe is not the best song, but it also kind of works because it's keeping things like light and fun and exciting.

If you put that Aqua sample or the Aqua interpolation in a track that, like, doesn't have the juice, like, takes itself too seriously, it falls flat. Yeah, it makes sense because, you know, if there's over a billion, Barbie doll sold, I feel like Barbie Girl was one of the most overplayed radio singles in the 90s, and it's so embedded in its own cultural meaning that you really can't escape it if you reference it. All right, Charlie, I have one more song for you, and it contains probably the most explicit reference to Aqua's Barbie Girl predating the Barbie soundtrack itself, and that is Not Your Barbie Girl by Ava Max. Not your bobby girl

I'm living in my own world I am plastic Call me classic You can't touch me there You can't touch my body Unless I say so Ain't your Bobby no I'm

I mean listen It's a song about consent culture So I'm like that's great But I also think The way that it's working with the material fails to recognize What that original material was Like I don't listen to

Barbie girl and think that it's promoting sort of male promiscuity and exploitation, it feels instead like a commentary on the idea of the Barbie doll. And not your Barbie girl seems to be almost taking that text too seriously and creating the anti-barby girl song. Yeah, I agree. That's kind of part of my issue with this version. It takes itself too seriously. And, the metaphor of being a Barbie girl, it extends through the whole track, you know, like, she is using the quote unquote Barbie girl connotation to mean that dumb bimbo aesthetic that Mattel was opposed to on Aqua's track in the 90s. She's looking to subvert that and say, I am not that. I am not your doll. This is organic Barbie.

But yeah, my issue with this version is that it doesn't really go all the way in that goofiness or even trying to like give a winking subversion to that. And that's kind of a shame because this is like firmly Ava Max's bag. Like she loves interpolating goofy hits in her music and has from her whole career. Check out her song My Head and My Heart, which is simply just a touch of classes around the world. So she's done this before two Eurodance songs with success. I think my head and my heart is a great song. I think pulling around the world by a touch of class is really smart.

So the fact that this flops for me comes down to the fact that it's not silly enough. It's not Barbie girl enough. She's kind of taking too big of a swing and making the song a little bit too serious. Yeah, nobody asked for an all-organic fair trade Barbie. Barbie is plastic. Barbie is plastic. And isn't that the thing? We want the music to be plastic, too. If we're going to reference that Mattel IP, I want the music to be equally as plastic. Imagination, life is your creation.

And bringing it back to the Barbie soundtrack, it seems like what the best tracks on that album do is that they keep things of the same ethos as Barbie itself. Fun, exciting. Plastic, of course. but in a good way. You know, the best pop music can contain a duality. It can be plastic, but also in that plasticity comes potential. You know, you can make Barbie anything you want. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, edited by Art Chung, illustrations by Iris Gottlie,

community management by Abby Barr, our executive producers in Shot Karwa, a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and a production of Vulture. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts at Switch. on pop on social media and switched on pop.com. We'll be back again next Tuesday and until then. Thanks for listening.