In Greta Gerwig’s Barbieland, where every day is the best day ever, pop stars like Lizzo, Dua Lipa and Charli XCX provide a bouncy soundtrack as the live-action dolls go about their happy-go-lucky lives. That is, until Margot Robbie’s “stereotypical” Barbie presents a record scratch with a rare and surprising existential query: “Do you think about dying?”
To solve this disruption to his perfect life, he rides in his pink Corvette and belts out a track full of strummed acoustic guitars and close harmonies. “There’s more than one answer to these questions, pointing me down a crooked line,” she sings with a smile, before thrusting a manicured pointer into the air.
Barbie’s song of choice on her way to the Real World is “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls.
The Indigo Girls, a folk duo from Georgia who have released 15 studio albums since 1987, featured “Closer to Fine” as the opening track on their self-titled 1989 LP. Emily Saliers wrote the song after she and her fellow singer and guitarist, Amy Ray, graduated from Emory University in Atlanta and regularly played at a local bar called Little Five Points. It became a staple of Girls’ live shows that went viral thanks to college radio play and an opening slot on a tour with another Georgia band, REM
It’s a song about searching, Saliers said by phone this month: “I’ve searched here and I’ve searched there, and if I just try to slow down and get a little knowledge and wisdom from different sources, then I’ll be closer to being okay.”
“Closer to Fine,” with its four-chord verses, octave-jumping chorus and somewhat unimaginative lyrics, has been a staple of dorm room singalongs, karaoke excursions and car rides for years, and is the Indigo Girls’ most recognizable tune. “Indigo Girls,” their first album for a major label, went double platinum and won a Grammy.
“It has a really easy melody and a really easy chorus, and the chorus repeats,” Saliers said. “When you get to a chorus of a song that you love and you can just sing it at the top of your lungs, I think just structurally, melodically, it’s really a road trip song and I think that’s why you see it in those kinds of scenes.”
Ray says “Closer to Fine” represents 80 percent of the band’s licensing, but the duo typically has little say about how their music will be used. They don’t allow commercials, but have had successful soundtrack and onscreen placements in movies like “Philadelphia” and TV shows including “The Office” and “Transparent.” In 1995, the duo performed as Whoopi Goldberg’s house band in the movie “Boys on the Side.”
“I think it’s really important at that time for us to reach more people,” Ray said in a phone interview. “Those things are very important for an artist.”
The Indigo Girls have similar hopes for “Barbie,” already a global phenomenon with powerhouse marketing and intergenerational brand recognition. A cover of “Closer to Fine” by Brandi and Catherine Carlile appears on the expanded edition of the film’s soundtrack.
“I always felt like that song really defined who they were at that time,” Brandi Carlile said in an interview. “That, more than homosexuals, what they are are intellectuals. They offer a life beyond the life that young people know. And a very young song,” she added. “It’s about finding more than you think you believe.”
However, given little context in an initial call from their manager, Saliers said he was nervous. “I didn’t know who was directing it or anything, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is about Barbie? We better check to make sure it’s right,’” she recalled. “But as it turned out, it was in Greta’s hands and it’s just this amazing thing that happened. It was a complete surprise to me and Amy.
Ray calls it a gift: “It’s great that they use it.”
“Closer to Fine” recurs in the film three times and appears in its official trailer, but it’s recirculating in pop culture organically. In March, a video of comedian Tig Notaro singing it on a party bus with a crew that included Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Sarah Paulson explode online. The band’s latest album, “Long Look,” arrives in 2020, and they’re on a tour (typically closing in on the tune) that will hit Ireland and Britain next month.
“You wouldn’t expect a folk lesbian duo to be in this hot-pink Barbie movie,” said Notaro, who has been a fan since seeing the “Closer to Fine” video on MTV’s alternative rock show “120 Minutes.” “Kind of being selfish and personal, I kind of feel like, ‘Yeah, we were onto something all these years,’ you know? It’s validating. Obviously it’s a big hit forever, but it’s very next level.
“When I hear a song like that,” she added, “my chest feels like it’s going to explode with joy and hope.”
The Indigo Girls are also the subject of a documentary, “It’s Only Life After All,” directed by Alexandria Bambach, which premiered at Sundance in January. The film serves as a reminder of how Saliers and Ray, both outspoken and from religious Southern backgrounds, endured scrutiny and prejudice as “Closer to Fine” put them in an early spotlight.
“For the longest time, I always felt like we were the heaviest lesbian joke in the lowest common denominator kind of way,” Saliers said in the documentary. Ray echoed those sentiments in the film, saying, “It’s like the worst thing you can do to be a gay female singer-songwriter.”
Critics characterize them as too earnest or too pretentious, if they cover them at all. The duo was used to comic effect on “Saturday Night Live” and “South Park”; even Ellen DeGeneres used them as a punchline after her character appeared on national television on her sitcom “Ellen.”
“That period of time that was really critical of women — of queer women, of women who don’t behave the way a patriarchal system wants,” Bambach said. “I think it’s a really critical time for us to look back, you know, just the things that we used to mock or laugh at or say were OK.”
Brandi Carlile said after watching the duo take so many shots over the years, the “Barbie” moment was so sweet. “The real injustice in how the Indigo Girls have been treated in these last decades is that they’ve been used as this kind of dog whistle that’s an acceptable way to classify lesbian parodies, and I’ve always been unsettled by it,” she said. “And so to see something like this happen for them on this scale and to watch them and that iconic kind of life-affirming song come to new ears is probably one of the coolest things I’ve seen in years.”
Singer-songwriter Katie Pruitt, 29, discovered the Indigo Girls in high school but embraced them more in college, when she says their music gave her the confidence to write personal and descriptive lyrics from her experiences as a gay woman.
“Cultural representation is the biggest, the single most important thing I think for people to fully embrace themselves,” she said. “You need all these different examples of who you’re allowed to be, and the answer is anybody – you’re allowed to be anybody.”
Pruitt called “Closer to Fine” the “northern star” of songwriting. “It’s incredible that it’s having a revival in 2023” in “a franchise that I grew up associated with extreme heteronormativity,” he said. “I love how they’re rebranding it now as something incredibly inclusive.”
Bambach, who discovered the Indigo Girls at counselor-led singalongs at a youth summer camp, saw “Barbie” during its opening weekend in Atlanta and said there were screams of joy and recognition when “Closer to Fine” played on the screen.
“It’s amazing to think that this brilliant director saw something in the song that was culturally relevant in this day and age,” Saliers said. But most of all, he appreciates that time has allowed listeners to step back and appreciate the band’s music as simply music.
“We’re finally allowed to just be us,” Saliers said. “Maybe we’ve been stuck around for a long time and we’re like, ‘Oh, it’s just Amy and Emily.’ We’re not the biggest joke anymore and we’re progressing in some ways in terms of this relationship, which is exciting. It’s weird, you know, to watch the culture change and shift — and it’s really changed for us.”