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What do queer folk-pop duo Indigo Girls and peak-'90s dad rock band Matchbox Twenty have in common? Well, they both have hit singles that would later become the parallel anthems for Margot Robbie's Barbie and Ryan Gosling's Ken – and the songs are cleverly juxtaposed in Greta Gerwig's summer blockbuster, highlighting the stark contrast between what men and women want.
There's only one song that plays on the radio in Barbie Land, and it's 'Closer to Fine' by Indigo Girls. The duo, made up of Amy Ray and Emily Sailers, are known for their activism in the queer community, and for pumping out catchy, feminist anthems. It's the opening track off their Grammy-winning self-titled album, and it's the perfect song for Barbie and her journey.
"And I went to the doctor / I went to the mountains / I looked to the children / I drank from the fountains," Barbie sings at the top of her lungs, later being joined by America Ferrera's Gloria. "There's more than one answer to these questions / Pointing me in a crooked line / And the less I seek my source for some definitive / Closer I am to fine."
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It's a stark contrast to Ken's favorite song – and the one that inevitably becomes the anthem for every Ken, resulting in a ridiculous (and amazing) campfire singalong complete with Gosling imitating singer Rob Thomas's late nineties dad-rock vocals.
'Push' by Matchbox Twenty, is arguably one of the most widely misinterpreted songs of the twenty-first century. It works perfectly for Ken's manic misogyny arc, though, as any moviegoer hearing the song for the first time is most likely only paying attention to the rather harsh nature of the chorus: "I wanna push you around / Well, I will / Well, I will / I wanna push you down / Well, I will / Well, I will / I wanna take you for granted."
Since its 1997 release, it's always been a somewhat common thought that the song is about abusing women, or at the very least, asserting dominance over them. At first glance, when Ken is singing it directly to Barbie, it sounds like he's celebrating his conquering of Barbie Land and ability to brainwash them into leaving their careers to become servants. But in reality, the song isn't all that different from Barbie's anthem, "Closer to Fine."
Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach didn't just shuffle Spotify to find the most feminist-sounding quintessentially female song to go against an incredibly male rock anthem that directly addresses women in a seemingly negative light – though it seems that way on the surface, which honestly makes it all the more clever.
"Said I don't know if I've ever been good enough / I'm a little bit rusty / and I think my head is cavin' in," Thomas sings. "And I don't know if I've ever been really loved / by a hand that's touched me / and I feel like something's gonna give."
Thomas himself has said over the years that song is about emotional abuse at the hands of a female partner, and most recently, that "the chorus is just the overall way I was looking at relationships at the time" (H/T Entertainment Weekly).
Though the song gets adopted by the Kens as a whole in a humorous way, it's really his way of trying to explain to Barbie how she's treated him, how she makes him feel less than worthy.
Both Matchbox Twenty and Indigo Girls are groups that were memes way before memes became a thing, becoming something of a joke in their respective genres – though it was Indigo Girls who had a much tougher go.
"That time period really was just so critical of women – of queer women, of women that didn't present the way that a patriarchal system wanted them to," Baumbach told The New York Times. "I think it’s a really critical time for us to be looking back at, you know, just things that we scoffed or laughed off or said were OK."
Thanks to the new Barbie movie, both artists have been vindicated in a way, with the film breathing new life into each song and asking the world to give them another shot, also allowing them to live on in the hearts of a younger generation.
Barbie is in theaters now. For more, check out the rest of our coverage:
