By Maris Sherman, Music Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Can you feel the Kenergy?
Ryan Gosling's Oscars 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.
Video made up a large portion of that jump: moving from 70,000 streams the week prior to 1.8 million.
That increase was felt across the music of "Barbie," but in smaller amounts: the full-film's soundtrack, "Barbie The Album," saw a jump of 23%, from 19 million to 23 million, and the Oscar-winning song, Billie Eilish and Finneas' "What Was I Made For?" saw an increase of 19% across U.S. audio and video streams, from 6.7 million to eight million.
With their win, Eilish, 22, became the youngest person to win two Oscars. The second youngest? Her brother Finneas, at age 26.
The Oscars' "I'm Just Ken" performance — which featured a stage full of "Kens" and Gosling serenading "Barbie" director Greta Gerwig and others — also saw big numbers on YouTube: two million views on the Oscars' official channel and 8.6 million on Atlantic Records' page — the major label that released "Barbie The Album."
The Oscars themselves saw a bump in ratings, also due to the popularity of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer." An estimated 19.5 million people watched the 96th Academy Awards ceremony on ABC, up 4% from last year — and the biggest number drawn by the telecast in four years.
Music Biopics Get Creative At Toronto Film Festival
Many of the expected conventions of music biopics are present in "Piece by Piece," about the producer-turned-pop star Pharrell Williams, and "Better Man," about the British singer Robbie Williams. There's the young artist's urge to break through, fallow creative periods and regrettable chapters of fame-addled excess. But there are a few, little differences. In "Piece by Piece," Pharrell is a Lego. And in "Better Man," Williams is played by a CGI monkey. If the music biopic can sometimes feel a little stale in format, these two movies, both premiering this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, attempt novel remixes. In each film, each Williams recounts his life story as a narrator. But their on-screen selves aren't movie stars who studied to get a part just right, but computer-generated animations living out real superstar fantasies. While neither Williams has much in common as a musician, neither has had a very traditional career. Their films became reflections of their individuality, and, maybe, a way to distinguish themselves in the crowded field of music biopics like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Rocketman." "This is about being who you are, even if it's not something that can be put in a box," Pharrell said in an interview Tuesday alongside director Morgan Neville. Also next to Pharrell: A two-foot-tall Lego sculpture of himself, which was later in the day brought to the film's premiere and given its own seat in the crowd. The experience watching the crowd-pleasing "Piece by Piece," which Focus Features will release Oct. 11, can be pleasantly discombobulating. A wide spectrum of things you never expected to see in Lego form are animated. Virginia Beach (where Pharrell grew up). An album of Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life."... Read More