Barbie is a big fan of the Indigo Girls, or at least, she likes to sing along with the 1989 folk-rock hit “Closer to Fine” in the car, like a million other women and some guys before her. The song comes up three times in the popular movie. This makes it almost certain that people will start singing about going “to see the doctor of philosophy” again, even if they’re just going to the beach.
In Greta Gerwig’s Barbieland, where every day is the best day ever, pop stars like Lizzo, Dua Lipa, and Charli XCX provide a lively music as the live-action dolls go about their happy lives. That is, until Margot Robbie’s “typical” Barbie scratches the record with a rare and shocking existential question: “Do you ever think about dying?”
Closer to fine by :emilysaliers
Closer to fine: Dance The night from Barbie
Credited: Youtube
To fix this problem in her otherwise perfect life, she gets in her pink Corvette and sings along to a song with close harmonies and strummed acoustic guitars. She sings with a smile, “There’s more than one answer to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line,” then thrusts a well-groomed finger into the air.
“Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls is the song Barbie listens to on her way to the Real World.
The Indigo Girls are a folk team from Georgia who have put out 15 studio albums since 1987. “Closer to Fine” was the first song on their self-titled album, which came out in 1989. Emily Saliers wrote the song after she and Amy Ray, another singer and musician, both graduated from Emory University in Atlanta and started playing a local pub called the Little Five Points Pub. It became a regular part of the Girls’ live show, and it spread because it was played on college radio and because the Girls opened for another Georgia band, R.E.M., on tour.
“I searched here and I searched there,” Saliers said over the phone this month, “and if I just try to take it easy and get a little bit of knowledge and wisdom from different sources, then I’m going to be closer to fine.”
Ray said that “Closer to Fine” makes up 80% of the band’s licencing, but the duo doesn’t usually know how their music will be used. They don’t allow ads, but their music has been used successfully in films and TV shows like “Philadelphia” and “The Office” and “Transparent.” The two played Whoopi Goldberg’s house band in the 1995 movie “Boys on the Side.”
