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No one was more surprised than Ryan Gosling when “I’m Just Ken” — the iconic power ballad from Barbie (2023) that has over 100 million streams on Spotify— won the Critics Choice Award for Best Song two months ago. The actor’s incredulous expression (“Kenfused”, as a YouTube commenter put it) when the award was announced went viral on the internet, raising the expectations surrounding the song’s live performance on Oscars night. Well, reader, we woke up at 4am to watch the show live and we can confirm that in an evening with few high points, the sheer Kenergy of seeing Ryan Gosling and his platoon of Kens on stage was a delight. “I’m Just Ken” may have lost the Oscar for Best Original Song to fellow Barbie nominee “What Was I Made For?” (by Billie Eilish), but it definitely won everyone’s hearts.
Can You Feel the Kenergy?
For a song with delightfully unserious lyrics like “Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blond fragility?” and “Am I not hot when I’m in my feelings?”, “I’m Just Ken” has resonated significantly with audiences, and Gosling himself. Written and produced by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, the song paints Ken as a tragic hero, crooning about his pent-up frustration at always being “number two”, and lamenting over his unrequited feelings for Barbie (“Where I see love, she sees a friend”). When director Greta Gerwig first played the song to Gosling, the actor said he could relate to Ken’s pathos and expressed his desire to sing the song himself. Ultimately, the song is an extended sequence in which Gosling’s Ken leads an absurd, slow-mo battle against Simu Liu’s Ken as they all vie for the attention of the Barbies.
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