Greta Gerwig PUSH'd For Song In "Barbie" Cementing Rob Thomas' Crush

"Barbie" is out and with a $155 million epic first-weekend run, it's breaking records as a movie, especially with a female director, ala Greta Gerwig. Rob Thomas, lead singer of the '90s band, Matchbox Twenty is glad that Gerwig pushed him to let the movie use the song, "Push" and it turned out not to be the center of all jokes.

Perhaps Thomas, 51, was initially hesitant about his song being featured in a movie because he is well aware of Matchbox Twenty’s notoriety as a band that is cool to ridicule.

Speaking to USA Today, Thomas recalls a period in the '90s when the more successful they got, the bigger the target they became and it all comes down to a poster, in a movie. Said Thomas, "I thought it was hilarious [that Greta Gerwig wanted to use our song]. But in "Bring It On," (Kirsten Dunst’s character) has this douchey boyfriend. And there’s a scene where he was in his dorm room with a Matchbox Twenty poster in the background. There was a whole period during the ‘90s where the more successful we got, the bigger target we were. We were an easy takedown."

That said, Thomas was still okay about "Push" being used in the movie and even gave Gerwig permission for Ryan Gosling to re-record the song in his voice.

He continued to say that when he got the call to use "Push" for "Barbie," he was told, "'Ken’s by the fireside, he’s playing the song and it’s his favorite band.' So I did this thinking I’d be the butt of the joke, and I was fine with that. I’m pretty thick-skinned."

After the movie came out, Julie Greenwald from Atlantic Records met Thomas and told him, "You come out of it loving Ken and loving 'Push.'" Thomas said, "And I was like, ‘Aww. Alright, really good!'"

Then again, after Ryan Gosling's baritone vocals in "I'm Just Ken", you can't NOT fan over his singing!

Greta Gerwig was very sure that she wanted both the Barbies and the Kens each to have their own '90s-era anthems. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gerwig says, "If the Barbies loved the Indigo Girls song "Closer to Fine," which is one of my favorite songs of all time, the Kens might really attach to Matchbox Twenty."

1983-born Gerwig fondly remembers "Push" from her teen days, "It was playing all the time on Quad 106.5 when I was in seventh grade, and if it wasn’t playing there, it was playing at 107.9. I really loved that song. I listened to it all the time and I was like, I feel it. Something’s in this."

She also said, "Growing up, I loved that song. I was like, ‘This is my rock 'n' roll, Dad. Enjoy The Who, but these are my guys.' And it wasn’t until college that I actually thought, 'What is that song about?' Just thinking about 13-year-old me singing along and really meaning it, I was like, 'That is so interesting.' I looked it up and, in a way, (Thomas) was playing a character. It’s almost like a story song."

Here's the song, and the story:

"Push" made the Billboard Top 10 in 1997, and was taken from Matchbox Twenty's 1996 debut album "Yourself or Someone Like You". The autobiographical lyrics are about a man who is experiencing emotional abuse from his partner and Gerwig remembers feeling something when she heard the song, like it was a story about something.

Ken plays this song to Barbie, [WARNING: Spoiler's Ahead] or as it pans out, the Kens play this song to the Barbies after taking over Barbieland and making it their Kendom. They play this song for hours on the beach before the Barbies play on their jealousy by exchanging them for another Ken.

The song's use in the hit movie has made it popular again, and that's something that's only reinforced Thomas' crush on Gerwig as he said, "Greta Gerwig has been one of my crushes forever, to the point where I was on a plane one time and I called my wife, like, “Baby, Greta Gerwig just came on the plane, oh my god.” So just the fact that [the use of the song] didn’t diminish my crush on Greta, that’s even better."

Here's Gosling's version of "Push."