Ryan Gosling’s stellar ‘I’m Just Ken’ Oscars performance inspires huge jump in streams

By MARIA SHERMAN
AP Music Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Can you feel the Kenergy? Ryan Gosling’s 2024 Academy Awards performance of the “Barbie” power ballad “I’m Just Ken” stole the show earlier this month. The popularity of his star-studded, Slash-soloing, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”-channeling set is still being felt. Luminate, the industry data and analytics company, found that on-demand U.S. audio and video streams for “I’m Just Ken” topped three million streams in the week after the Academy Awards. That’s a 422% increase from the prior week, when it had 600,000 streams. That increase was felt across the music of “Barbie,” but in smaller amounts: the full-film’s soundtrack, “Barbie The Album,” saw a 23% jump.