GWAR have reworked Ryan Gosling's emo rock ballad I'm Just Ken from the Barbie movie, performing We're Just GWAR, for AV Club. The first guests to take up the challenge of performing an unexpected cover for the relaunch of the pop-culture publication's iconic cover series Undercover (think triple j's Like A Version, but in the USA), GWAR went all-in on the segment, penning new self-referential lyrics to the song and beefing up the instrumentation with some shock rock chops. As for why the band agreed to the challenge, it seems it came down to vocalist BL0thr's longstanding love for Ryan Gosling.
“We’ve been fans of Ryan Gosling since the Mickey Mouse Club days, and like most terrifying intergalactic heavy metal superstars, we simply adore musical theatre. This just made sense.”
Watch the performance below.
Notable lyrical highlights of the GWAR rendition are plentiful. Still, the phrases that stood out the most to us here at Maniacs are "It doesn't matter what we do, we're still the band that spews, too gross, too much for most, fuck you, boring metal, it's just all the same, we'd rather entertain, than pose around and mope, like tough guy scowling goats, we're just GWAR".
Explaining why GWAR was chosen as the band to relaunch the previously dormant but beloved series, AV Club's Josh Jackson states "I couldn’t think of a better way to bring back AV Undercover than with the band responsible for one of my favourite episodes. GWAR once again knocked it out of the park, completely making a song from the Barbie movie all its own."
If you enjoyed this cover from GWAR, and are looking for more unexpected heavy covers of pop songs, you could do worse than to check out our list of the best heavy 'like a versions' of all time. If you want more GWAR content, the band released their NPR Tiny Desk Concert. The GWAR performance is one of the more memorable appearances on that show since Baltimore hardcore punks Turnstile rocked the NPR institution in 2022.
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