This story about “Barbie” first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap magazine.

Of all the songs from Barbie, it was Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” the first song released from the movie’s soundtrack, that had audiences quite literally dancing their way into the theater.

But it wasn’t easy to come up with a song for the exuberant dance number that comes early in the film. “The song took blood, sweat and tears,” Lipa said. “We rewrote it so many times.”

Dualipa and her co-writer Caroline Ailin worked with Barbie composers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt to figure out a way to tell a story that captures and distills the essence of Barbie into a song. 

“(This is) a character who has to be perfect all the time, even when things aren’t going her way,” she said. “How (do we) show strength and resilience, even through the bad days?”

Gerwig laid out the entire plot to Ronson and Lipa early on, showing them clips from the movie as well as allowing them to sit in on the dance rehearsals for the song itself.