Ronson; Wyatt
Collier Schorr; Courtesy of Subject
Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt couldn’t have guessed their first time scoring a film together would be the biggest movie of the year.
For the duo, working with A-list artists — such as Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Adele, Lorde and Bruno Mars — is nothing new. And Ronson had even previously scored a film before: 2015’s Mortdecai. But taking on Greta Gerwig’s Barbie? That was a different feat. As Wyatt explains, they’re the type of people to “dive in the pool and learn how to swim later” — and they’re definitely taking laps now.
Not only has the Margot Robbie-led film broken box office records, but Barbie: The Album was a chart-topping and Grammy-nominated hit, which Ronson finds “amazing and totally baffling.” With a lineup of songs including Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”, Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” and Lizzo’s “Pink,” the music alone made its way from the big screen to being played millions of times across social media.
But before this global success, the pair actually started with just two songs. Ronson was already in talks with Gerwig about creating a few tracks for the film and decided to team up with his longtime friend Wyatt, who he says was working on Dua Lipa’s next album at the time.
“Originally, [Gerwig] was just looking for two songs for the film: a dance number that became ‘Dance the Night,’ and a Ken song,” explains Ronson. “It was never in the script [that] Ryan was going to sing. It was just like, ‘If we’re going to have Barbie’s perfect day song, we need a song from Ken’s point of view.’ ”
It wasn’t until the pair heard Gerwig looping their “I’m Just Ken” over an 11-minute battle sequence that they knew they needed — and wanted — to do more for the film. Especially after Ronson described it as “painful to listen to as a songwriter.”
He explains, “We had a bit of professional pride and we were like, ‘We can handle this, let us do our thing.’ And that’s even where we started to work out some of the little themes that come back in the score. It was such a movement that took you through the real world, through Mattel, through the battle, to the pink courtroom sequence, [all of] which was originally inside the Ken song.”
As they continued to work through different scenes, Gerwig saw how they were “building a musical language of the film” in a “slightly organic way.”
Though they felt pressure because Barbie was already anticipated to be one of the biggest movies of the year, Wyatt knew they “had the belief that we would be able to get what Greta was doing” with her vision.
“We would write a scene four or five or six times to just keep throwing versions of it out, saying, ‘This is not quite good enough, we’re not really bringing you to tears in this moment,’ ” Wyatt recalls from the long nights creating the score. “And there sometimes would be the directive from Greta that would be like, ‘Yeah, I want people to feel emotional in this moment.’ ”
Ronson adds, “We think that we’d have it, and I’d look at Andrew and be like, ‘If you’re not crying, we don’t have it. I’m not crying yet.’ ”
Loving the film as much as they did, the duo wanted to make sure they did every scene justice from a musical aspect. Ronson specifically remembers how, for the powerful scene when Barbie meets Ruth Handler, the woman who invented the Barbie doll and is played by Rhea Perlman, he and Wyatt wanted to “get it more and more emotional.
“I was just so in love with the movie and all the characters and the performances,” says Ronson. “I’m sure that happens with movies and composers where you’re in awe of the thing that you’re working on. Like, we just didn’t want to let the film down.”
While working on the film itself felt like a dream for Ronson and Wyatt, they also had to pinch themselves when it came to all the artists who would be featured on the soundtrack. Ronson acknowledged that it “sounded like we were making up a fictitious Christmas list — like, you knew you’re never going to get all these things. So it was pretty insane when people started to come back and then watch some of the movie and then be like, ‘I’m in.’ ”
They credit Gerwig, who they agree is an “effortlessly cool” person with “a lot of grace,” for pulling the impressive artists list together, which also includes the likes of Karol G, Charli XCX, Sam Smith and Khalid. But they note that Gerwig always let everyone weigh in and made them feel that their “contribution was just as important as anybody on the film.”
Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” was the first track they finished, because Gerwig needed it when dance rehearsals were about to start. And the most unexpected artist on the soundtrack had to be Gosling, who plays Ken. Some may be shocked to learn that the actor had only a couple of hours to record “I’m Just Ken,” but Ronson says seeing the actor “performing the song in the studio with, like, every inch of his body” was powerful.
“It’s such a personal, weird thing, like meeting somebody for the first time and then recording a vocal,” adds Ronson. “It’s all these emotional things. You want to put the person so at ease, but you’re also aware that the clock is ticking.”
As for Eilish and Finneas’ emotional track “What Was I Made For?”, the duo admit that they were a little hesitant to add anything to the song because the siblings already “have such a special language” between them. Ronson knew it was a beautiful song, and only wanted to give it “the light touch” to make it “almost feel like a big puffy cloud [when] the notes come out.”
Adds Wyatt, “It’s one of those things where it was incredible as it was. If we wanted to make it work with the sort of textures that were going to be occurring in the film up to that point, it was important to make less be more and, like, don’t fuck the song.”
To think about two songs potentially being Oscar contenders is overwhelming, but Ronson and Wyatt agree that there are “so many great songs in this film,” from what they called Eilish’s “heart-wrencher” to Dua Lipa’s track that “essentially narrates a TikTok dance [for] Margot Robbie.”
Looking back on the project that kept them busy for over a year with grueling hours, they recall only the “wonderful moments” that helped bring Barbie to life. “It’s funny — once a project’s done and once you put it out, it belongs to everybody else [and] it’s no longer yours, which is so wonderful,” explains Ronson, who also notes that he felt spoiled having had the chance to score Barbie.
Wyatt feels the exact same way, adding, “There’s just so many wonderful people involved, and it was really rewarding.”
This story first appeared in a November standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.