Himbos get a win-bo as "I'm Just Ken" lands on the Billboard Hot 100

Ryan Gosling's Barbie ballad to total male inadequacy has scored itself a place on the Billboard charts…way below several songs about Barbie, natch

By William Hughes | August 3, 2023 | 4:06am

Aux News I'm Just Ken

Ryan Gosling Screenshot: YouTube

Barbie’s plastic-handed stranglehold on the American consciousness continues apace this week, as Consequence notes that Greta Gerwig’s subversive, highly lucrative take on the doll icon has infiltrated yet another arena of popular success: The Billboard charts.

But it’s not just Margot Robbie’s Barbie effortlessly dominating things for once. No, we’re giving this particular win to Ryan Gosling’s Ken, who now has a certified hit on his hands, with his soulful ballad of total inadequacy, “I’m Just Ken,” now sitting at No. 87 on the vaunted Billboard Hot 100.

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And, okay, sure, “I’m Just Ken” is actually doing much, much worse on the chart—which measures weekly streaming activity for music—than several other, more Barbie-centric songs from the soundtrack. That includes Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World,” which is No. 8, and Dua Lipa’s “Dance The Night,” at No. 12. But those are songs being sung by planetary-level music superstars, whereas…he’s just Ken! (Okay, actually, Gosling does have a sideline in music, having released an album with his band Dead Man’s Bones in 2009. And the song was written by big-name producers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. And it features performances from Slash, Wolfgang Van Halen, and Foo Fighters’ Josh Freese. So there might have been a few advantages. But, even so: A triumph!)

Of course, “I’m Just Ken” has absolutely no hope of overcoming the true masterpiece of aggrieved white dude self-pity in the charts right now, which is pretty clearly [the end of this joke left intentionally blank because we don’t want Jason Aldean’s fans getting mad at us].

Anyway: Barbie continues to rampage its way through theaters; the film has currently brought in something on the order of $800 million, and is expected to crest the billion dollar mark before its tenure is up.