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Barbie soundtrack album breaks chart record by getting three tracks into the top five

By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 31 July 2023

So this ‘Barbie’ film then, that’s a thing isn’t it? I ran some checks over the weekend and can definitely confirm, a thing it is. There’s a soundtrack too, of course, and that had quite an impact on the UK singles chart on Friday.

In the week following the release of the film and ‘Barbie: The Album’, six tracks from the record were sufficiently streamed to appear in the UK Top 40, three of them in the top five.

Billie Eilish’s ‘What Was I Made For’ is at number three, Dua Lipa’s ‘Dance The Night’ is at four, and Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s ‘Barbie World’, complete with a little bit of Aqua, is at number five.

That’s Aqua’s first appearance in the top five in 25 years, the Official Charts Company told us on Friday. And their actual 1997 song ‘Barbie Girl’ has also been pushed back into the top 40 – just, at number 40 – despite not being on the soundtrack.

The other tracks from the soundtrack on the chart this week are Charli XCX’s ‘Speed Drive’ at number nineteen, Ryan Gosling performing ‘I’m Just Ken’ at number 25 and Lizzo’s ‘Pink’ at number 39.

And now another nugget of chart trivia courtesy of the OCC. ‘Barbie: The Album’ is “the first film soundtrack in UK chart history to land three top five singles simultaneously”.

The soundtracks for ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and ‘Grease’ both had three tracks in the top ten at the same time when they were released in 1978, but not the top five. Though had streaming existed back then, they’d probably have matched or out-performed the ‘Barbie’ soundtrack chart success.

But it didn’t, and that’s not Barbie’s fault.