Rob Thomas signed off on Barbie’s “Push” scene even though he thought they were making fun of him

One of the trailers for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie pitched it as the movie for people who love Barbie and for the people who hate Barbie, setting it up as both a celebration of the iconic doll and a meta-takedown of what the doll represents. But the movie doesn’t just lovingly poke fun at Barbie herself, it also—of all things—has some fun at the expense of Matchbox Twenty, and lead singer/songwriter Rob Thomas thought the movie was going to be much meaner to him than it is.

[The following contains spoilers for Barbie.]

Late in Barbie, after a visit to the real world has poisoned the mind of Ken (Ryan Gosling) with toxic masculinity, he and the other Kens take over Barbieland and turn it into a patriarchal paradise. One of the changes is even replacing the Barbie national anthem, Indigo Girls’ “Closer To Fine,” with Ken’s favorite song: “Push” by Matchbox Twenty—a song that is pretty clearly sung from the perspective of a misogynistic dick, highlighting the fragility of Ken and his phony dark turn.

Speaking with USA Today, Thomas explained that he did give Gerwig permission to use the song pretty early on, but he assumed they would just be making fun of him. “I did this thinking I’d be the butt of the joke,” he explained, “and I was fine with that.” Thomas claimed he’s “pretty thick-skinned,” though he does also bring up the fact that Kirsten Dunst’s “douchey boyfriend” in Bring It On has a Matchbox Twenty poster in his dorm room, and he figured that the band was still just an “easy takedown.”

But then he ran into Atlantic Records CEO Julie Greenwald at a show, and she told him she had just seen a screening of Barbie and that people “come out of it loving Ken and ‘Push.’” Thomas seems like he was relieved by that, mentioning to USA Today that he’s had a crush on Gerwig “forever,” and he also noted that he’s looking forward to finally seeing Barbie (“Apparently I’m not famous enough to get a screener,” he added) so he can watch “two of the most beautiful people on the planet while I listen to my own song.”

As for “Push,” Thomas recognizes that it’s a song with some issues, saying that “the ‘90s was a time of manufactured angst” and that nobody “wanted to be a victim in a song,” so he ended up with these lyrics about “emotional manipulation” and how it’s “so much easier to find someone you can take advantage of than it is to actually put work into a relationship.” Thomas admitted that he didn’t really know that that’s what he was writing about at the time, but now “Push” has landed in this perfect place where it can become a literal anthem for performative toxic masculinity in Barbie, embracing its status as a catchy tune and criticizing the message of its problematic lyrics! Barbie is the movie for people who love “Push” and for people who hate “Push.”