In Greta Gerwig’s Barbieland, the place each day is the perfect day ever, pop stars like Lizzo, Dua Lipa and Charli XCX present a bouncy soundtrack because the live-action dolls go about their cheery, blissful lives. That’s, till Margot Robbie’s “stereotypical” Barbie cues a report scratch with a uncommon and surprising existential question: “Do you guys ever take into consideration dying?”
To resolve this disruption to her in any other case good life, she hops in her pink Corvette and belts alongside to a observe stuffed with strummed acoustic guitars and shut harmonies. “There’s a couple of reply to those questions, pointing me in a crooked line,” she sings with a smile, earlier than thrusting a manicured pointer within the air.
Barbie’s track of selection on her method to the Actual World is the Indigo Ladies’ “Nearer to Wonderful.”
The Indigo Ladies, a folks duo from Georgia who’ve launched 15 studio albums since 1987, featured “Nearer to Wonderful” because the opening observe on their self-titled 1989 LP. Emily Saliers wrote the track after she and her fellow singer and guitarist, Amy Ray, graduated from Emory College in Atlanta and have been recurrently taking part in a neighborhood bar known as Little 5 Factors. It grew to become a staple of the Ladies’ dwell present that unfold thanks to varsity radio play and a gap slot on tour with one other Georgia band, R.E.M.
It’s a track about looking for, Saliers mentioned by telephone this month: “I searched right here and I searched there, and if I simply attempt to take it simple and get slightly bit of information and knowledge from totally different sources, then I’m going to be nearer to fantastic.”
“Nearer to Wonderful,” with its four-chord verses, octave-jumping refrain and barely inscrutable lyrics, has been a staple of dorm room singalongs, karaoke excursions and automobile rides for years, and it’s the Indigo Ladies’ most identifiable tune. “Indigo Ladies,” their first album for a serious label, went double platinum and received a Grammy.
“It’s obtained an easy melody and very easy refrain, and the refrain repeats,” Saliers mentioned. “While you get to a refrain of a track that you simply’re into and you’ll simply sing it on the high of your lungs, I believe simply structurally, melodically, it’s actually a highway journey track and I believe that’s why you see it in these sorts of scenes.”
Ray mentioned “Nearer to Wonderful” represents 80 % of the band’s licensing, however the duo are typically informed little or no about how their music shall be used. They don’t enable commercials, however have had profitable soundtrack and onscreen placements in movies like “Philadelphia” and TV reveals together with “The Workplace” and “Clear.” In 1995, the duo starred as Whoopi Goldberg’s home band within the film “Boys on the Facet.”
“I believe it was actually essential at the moment for us to achieve extra individuals,” Ray mentioned in a telephone interview. “These sorts of issues are simply invaluable for an artist.”
The Indigo Ladies have an analogous hope for “Barbie,” already a world phenomenon with powerhouse advertising and intergenerational model recognition. A “Nearer to Wonderful” cowl by Brandi and Catherine Carlile seems on the expanded version of the film’s soundtrack.
“I all the time felt that track was actually defining of who they have been in that period,” Brandi Carlile mentioned in an interview. “That, much more than lesbians, what they have been was intellectuals. They have been providing up a life past the life that younger individuals knew. And it’s a really younger particular person’s track,” she added. “It’s about looking for out greater than you thought you believed.”
Nonetheless, given little context in an preliminary name from their supervisor, Saliers mentioned she was nervous. “I didn’t know who was directing it or something, and I used to be like, ‘Oh, that is about Barbie? We higher examine to verify that is kosher,’” she recalled. “However because it turned out, it’s within the fingers of Greta and it’s simply this superb factor that occurred. It was an entire shock to me and Amy.”
Ray known as it a present: “It’s simply completely great that they’re utilizing it.”
“Nearer to Wonderful” recurs within the movie 3 times and seems in its official trailer, however it’s been recirculating in popular culture organically, too. In March, a video of the comic Tig Notaro singing it on a celebration bus alongside a crew that included Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Sarah Paulson blew up on-line. The band’s newest album, “Lengthy Look,” arrived in 2020, and so they have been on a tour (sometimes closing with the tune) that touches down in Eire and Britain subsequent month.
“You don’t think about a folks lesbian duo to be on this hot-pink Barbie film,” mentioned Notaro, who has been a fan since seeing the “Nearer to Wonderful” video on MTV’s different rock present “120 Minutes.” “Form of simply selfishly and personally, I really feel like, ‘Yeah, we have been onto one thing all these years,’ you realize? It’s validating. Clearly it’s been an enormous hit without end, however that is so subsequent degree.”
“After I hear a track like that,” she added, “it appears like simply my chest bursts open with pleasure and hope.”
The Indigo Ladies are additionally the topic of a documentary, “It’s Solely Life After All,” directed by Alexandria Bambach, which premiered at Sundance in January. The movie serves as a reminder of how Saliers and Ray, each brazenly queer and from spiritual Southern backgrounds, endured scrutiny and prejudice as “Nearer to Wonderful” put them in an early highlight.
“For the longest time I all the time felt we have been the brunt of lesbian jokes in type of a lowest frequent denominator,” Saliers says within the documentary. Ray echoed these sentiments within the movie, saying, “It appeared like essentially the most derogatory factor you can be is a feminine homosexual singer-songwriter.”
Critics would check with them as too earnest or overly pretentious, in the event that they lined them in any respect. The duo have been used to comedian impact on “Saturday Night time Stay” and “South Park”; even Ellen DeGeneres employed them as a punchline after her character got here out on nationwide tv on her sitcom “Ellen.”
“That point interval that actually was simply so vital of girls — of queer girls, of girls that didn’t current the way in which {that a} patriarchal system wished them to,” Bambach mentioned. “I believe it’s a very vital time for us to be trying again at, you realize, simply issues that we scoffed or laughed off or mentioned have been OK.”
Brandi Carlile mentioned after watching the duo take so many pictures over time, the “Barbie” second is further candy. “The actual injustice of how the Indigo Ladies have been handled all through these previous couple of many years is that they’ve been used as type of this canine whistling acceptable method to kind of parody lesbians, and I all the time felt destabilized by it,” she mentioned. “And so seeing one thing like this occur for them on this scale and watching them and that iconic type of life-affirming track make its method to new ears might be one of many coolest issues I’ve seen in years.”
The singer-songwriter Katie Pruitt, 29, discovered the Indigo Ladies in highschool however additional embraced them in faculty, when she mentioned their music gave her the arrogance to write down private and descriptive lyrics from her experiences as a homosexual lady.
“Illustration in tradition is the most important, the one most essential factor I believe for individuals to completely embrace themselves,” she mentioned. “You want all these totally different examples of who you’re allowed to be, and the reply is anyone — you’re allowed to be anyone.”
Pruitt known as “Nearer to Wonderful” the “northern star” of songwriting. “It’s unbelievable that it’s having a resurgence in 2023” in “a franchise that I grew up associating with excessive heteronormativity,” she mentioned. “I really like how now they’re rebranding it as one thing extremely inclusive.”
Bambach, who found the Indigo Ladies throughout singalongs led by counselors at youth summer time camp, noticed “Barbie” on opening weekend in Atlanta and mentioned there have been screams of pleasure and recognition when “Nearer to Wonderful” performed onscreen.
“It’s very gratifying to assume that there’s one thing that this very fantastic director noticed within the track that had cultural relevance on this day and time,” Saliers mentioned. However above all, she appreciates that point has allowed listeners to step again and recognize the band’s music as merely music.
“We’re lastly allowed to only be us,” Saliers mentioned. “I assume we’ve caught round lengthy sufficient and it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s simply Amy and Emily.’ We not are the brunt of a joke and we’re flourishing in sure methods when it comes to this relevancy, which is gratifying. It’s unusual, you realize, to look at tradition change and transfer — and it actually has modified for us.”
