Dua Lipa Gives Barbie Her “Bespoke” Song Via “Dance the Night”

As the Summer of Barbie kicks into high gear, it’s only right that the film should be matched by an indelible soundtrack (perhaps not since Promising Young Woman has so much thought and care been put into a movie’s accompanying pop song landscape). Leading up that album is Dua Lipa (who also appears in the movie as “Mermaid Barbie”) with the single “Dance the Night,” a major improvement from her so-called summer anthem of 2022, “Potion.” Teaming with Caroline Ailin again (the pair previously co-wrote “New Rules,” “Don’t Start Now,” “Pretty Please” and “Fever” together), Lipa gets some production help from Mark Ronson (who scored the soundtrack and actually DM’d Lipa to get her involved with the project), Andrew Wyatt (also in charge of the score) and the Picard Brothers for a 70s-infused feel that matches the visuals of the video (both sartorially and set design-wise).

Favoring a “filming the video within the video” structure (à la Britney Spears in “[You Drive Me] Crazy”—which was a soundtrack single as well), we open on Lipa being escorted into a sound stage and getting quickly bombarded with the frenetic energy of the set as she’s told there’s some new choreography she has to learn (again, how very Britney while making the video for “[You Drive Me] Crazy,” as she said at the mention of new dance moves to be incorporated, “I’ve just got so much choreography on my head right now”). Lipa is only too ready to oblige the request as she proceeds to start practicing the new moves—shots that are intercut before we see Lipa telling her choreographer, “God, I love that” before the giant disco ball set piece abruptly comes crashing to the ground (an unfortunate snafu that will come full-circle at the end when Barbie director Greta Gerwig makes a cameo). Thus, not an auspicious start. But, as Lipa says in “Dance the Night, “Don’t give a damn/When the night’s here I don’t do tears/Baby no chance I could dance, I could dance, I could dance/Watch me, dance/Dance the night away.” And that’s just what we’re about to watch her do—albeit in the daylight hours, and within the setting of a carefully-curated, hyper-manipulated “dance floor.”

When we aren’t seeing her on the stair-filled stage, there are shots of her in her dressing room (this, instead, echoing Britney’s “Circus” video, complete with all the close-ups on perfume bottles). But the walls of that dressing room quickly come tumbling down—literally—as we’re then shown Lipa among a backdrop with nothing more than a bright klieg light behind her as she proceeds to dance in conjunction with backup dancers wielding clear plastic umbrellas before her perfume bottles seemingly come to life in the form of dancers dressed up as, well, perfume bottles. Elements of the “dressing room set” reappear in the form of multiple clothing racks packed to the gills with all manner of pink and gold sequined frocks as Lipa dances in the center while her dancers move them deftly in a circle around her.

The outline of Mattel’s signature, many-pointed logo then transitions us into seeing a bevy of Lipas walk through a hall of bulb-lit mirrors (in fact, it reminds one of a similar scene in the Chemical Brothers’ “Let Forever Be” video). Except they’re not really mirrors, so much as glassless rectangular metal bars that are the perfect size for walking through. Lipa is then joined by other dancers dressed in the same metallic pink halter top and blue mini skirt before she ascends the staircase with the (newly-replaced) disco ball at the center.

This is a world of make-believe, and we’re given that sense repeatedly as the fantastical set pieces keep coming (including two giant makeup palettes for the background behind the disco ball). In some respects, the stairs also channel the vibe of the set for “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (something Margot Robbie would also riff on as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey). It’s around the one-minute, ten-second mark that scenes of the Barbie movie itself start to get interspersed. Specifically, parallel dancing moments of Barbie and co. as they party on a similar set. As Barbie states to Ken in the trailer of such an evening, “I don’t have anything big planned, just a giant blowout party with all the Barbies and planned choreography and a bespoke song.” One imagines that, when the time finally does arrive to see that scene in all its splendor, the “bespoke song” has to be none other than Lipa’s “Dance the Night” (and, if not, that might be a terrible mistake).

As the video continues, Lipa takes a brief pause to watch her presumed director scream and extend her hands out to the disco ball she sees crashing to the ground, likely watching it happen in slow motion from her helpless vantage point. As everything around her (including the disco ball) seems to freeze, Lipa keeps dancing, adhering to the casually cold lyrics, “Watch me, dance/Dance the night away/My heart could be burning, but you won’t see it on my face/Watch me, dance/Dance the night away/I’ll still keep the party running, not one hair out of place/Lately I’ve been moving close to the edge/Still be looking my best/I stay on the beat/You can count on me/I ain’t missing no steps.” No, she certainly isn’t. For that’s what it is to be a “Barbie Girl” (a.k.a. a woman in general)—you’ve got to be perfect, unflappable and always “on,” no matter what’s really going on behind those seemingly dead eyes of yours.

In many ways, that’s the purpose of this song: to remind that, beneath the glossy veneer many women exude for the sake of making others (read: men) feel good about themselves, there’s so much involved in appearing so “effortless.” And yes, Lipa embodies such effortlessness in sentiments like, “Baby you can Find me under the lights/Diamonds under my eyes/Turn the rhythm up/Don’t you wanna just come along for the ride?/Oh my outfit so tight.” The Britney influence is evident on this verse, too, for she expressed something tantamount on “Brave New Girl” when she sang, “He said, ‘Let’s get a room girl, come and ride with me’” and “She wants the good life, no need to rewind/She needs to really, really find what she wants/She lands on both feet, won’t take a back seat.” Indeed, one can’t help but think that Spears would have been an ideal choice to create a song for the Barbie Soundtrack, her own aesthetic and discography a long-standing homage to “Barbie World.” Alas, as the movie would suggest, such a “shiny, plastic” existence is so often betrayed by a sinister undercurrent—something Spears knows only too well.

The final pièce de résistance in set pieces (apart from a huge Playboy-esque “boudoir” heel) comes in the form of a Barbie convertible that gets split in half as the camera “goes through it” before we see Lipa sitting in her own pink car (the same one Robbie sits in for a promotional still of the movie). We then cut to a scene of her strutting through the set with a slew of human disco balls behind her. The disco ball motif, in case you couldn’t tell by now, is very important. For, as Taylor Swift’s “mirrorball” made clear, this ostensible emblem of good times merely reflects back what everyone else wants to see. Images of Barbie are also conjured when Swift sings, “I’m a mirrorball/I can change everything about me to fit in…/The masquerade revelers/Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten.”

Nonetheless, as Lipa puts it, “That’s the moment I shine/‘Cause every romance/Shakes and it bends/Don’t give a damn.” And how could any Barbie when she looks this good as the music keeps playing? Which is why one just hates to think of the unpleasant thoughts that might creep in if it ever stops.