Second Chance for Indigo Girls

More than thirty years after the success of “Closer to Fine”, the folk-rock duo became popular thanks to the soundtrack to “Barbie”.

After a massive advertising campaign, the film Barbie was released on July 20 last year and was a predictable success, generating over $780 million in revenue in less than two weeks. Among the many things the film brought fame and notoriety, along with Pink, Birkenstocks and the toy company Mattel, is the late 1980s biggest hit song by the folk rock duo Indigo Girls: “Closer to the end”.

This song “Closer to the Beautiful” would have been included in the soundtrack to the film Barbie it was already anticipated by one of the trailers of the past months, but with the release in cinemas, it turned out to be one of the most relevant songs. This earned her high praise from a largely new audience of all ages, as well as plenty of critical comment: especially since she’s featured on a soundtrack full of original pieces written by some of today’s most successful pop artists. like Lizzo, Dua Lipa and Nicki Minaj. For the many casters and fans of the Indigo Girls, who have had a loyal but limited audience for decades and who never made it into the mainstream due to their reputation as alternative, lesbian and leftist artists, this success is a well deserved second chance.

The Indigo Girls are Amy Ray and Emily Salyers, who are now 59 and 60 respectively. They met as children in DeKalb County, Georgia, where they lived: they started playing together when they were in high school, and then again when they both reunited at Emory University in Atlanta. Their first album strange fire, was released in 1987 and “Closer to Fine” was the first track on their second album. indigo girls, since 1989. It was written by Salier shortly after they both graduated and became the most recognizable piece at their local club gigs. It got a lot of radio play and this led to them being the opening act for the much more famous REM, also from Georgia.

The Indigo Girls have released 13 more albums since then, but Closer to Fine is still their biggest hit and 80 percent of their music royalties come from there.

Both openly gay, the Indigo Girls were initially very popular with the queer community, who then found them and their musical statements and storytelling hard to find elsewhere. However, with “Closer to Fine” they reached a wider audience of young American women, so the song became a kind of hymn to the experience of adolescence and female friendship. Also, because of its simple, repetitive and catchy tune, it “has been a staple of dorm singing, karaoke and car rides for years,” wrote Trish Bendix in The newspaper “New York Times.

In one of the interviews they gave after the release Barbie

Ray said that he never had a Barbie as a child, and that “the connection to Barbie made me a little nervous at first.” However, after reading the script written by Greta Gerwig, who also directed the film, and Noah Baumbach, they changed their minds. “It was a giant gift that fell from the sky,” Salier said. – Our song in an important film that doesn’t get boring? For something that works great for us? When will it happen again at this point in your career?”

The Indigo Girls song returns three times in the film, once in the scene where Barbie leaves the ideal world of Barbieland for the real world, and sings from her heart while driving her pink car. The extended version of the soundtrack also includes a cover of “Closer to Fine” by singer-songwriter Brandi Carlyle and his wife, directed by Kathryn Shepherd.

Some commentators saw this new success of “Closer to Fine” as a kind of redemption for the Indigo Girls. Thanks to Barbie, the song is now listened to and appreciated even by people who were not even born in the 1990s. Brandi Carlyle, 42, told The newspaper “New York Times that she has always felt destabilized by the way indigo girls have been treated in recent decades and “subtly used as a general reference for lesbian irony”. According to her, the success of “Closer to a Fine” thanks to Barbie is “one of the coolest things” in recent years.

The Indigo Girls have often been the butt of homophobic jokes on American television: The newspaper “New York Times give an example Saturday night lifefamous American NBC comedy program, cartoon for adults South Park and comedian Ellen DeGeneres, who is also a lesbian. It was presented at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It’s only life

, a documentary about the Indigo Girls, directed by American filmmaker Alexandria Bombach. The film explores how society and the media reacted to two gay artists from the conservative and religious province of Georgia after the great success of Closer to Fine. The Indigo Girls are currently touring in support of their latest album. Look longreleased in 2020.

Before Barbie, “Closer to Fine” had already been used in several films such as Philadelphia (1993) and series such as Office AND Transparent. In March, the song received a small splash of publicity after a video of a group of well-known lesbian actresses, including Glennon Doyle, Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor, singing and dancing in a party van circulated online.

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