Ryan Gosling has exceeded every possible expectation with his live performance of the craziest song from the Barbie movie.
Ryan Gosling had promised that his live performance of “I’m Just Ken” during the Oscars night would be incredible. And he wasn’t lying. Following an already amazing Christmas version, the song by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt for the Barbie movie reached its peak success with a spectacular performance at the Oscars, a spectacle that will surely be remembered for a long time.
It’s not that “I’m Just Ken” somehow diminished the impact or weight of the other performances we saw during the ceremony, including Becky G’s. It’s just that it effectively became the Best Musical Number in Oscars history.
The first stroke of genius was in the costume exchange between Gosling and Margot Robbie: while she had spent the entire promotional campaign of the film wearing some of Barbie Mattel’s most iconic looks. He performed this song in the film all dressed in black, until reversing the color palette on the night of the Oscars. A clever move, but… It wasn’t easy to perform “I’m Just Ken” live in front of the whole world (and by whole world, it means on television), especially when you’re not a professional singer, but Ryan Gosling is another story. Ryan Gosling is one of the most charismatic showmen alive.
His performance utilized some karaoke star tricks, like getting the audience to sing along – only his audience consisted of Greta Gerwig, America Ferrera, and Margot Robbie – and he had a nice ace up his sleeve (Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen). And then… a show within the show, this performance is the great, absurd, gigantic, glorious culmination of a joke we’ve been laughing at since July:
What can we say, we love Gosling, or rather, we love him more than the members of the Academy jury, since in the end, the Oscar for Best Original Song went to “What Was I Made For” by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. Okay, it’s all a victory for the Barbie brand… but Billie Eilish’s performance was a bore compared to “I’m Just Ken,” which was the best ever.
