Last year, summer belonged to "Barbenheimer," the simultaneous theatrical release of Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
In a roundabout way then, thanks to the Barbie side of the equation, the summer also belonged to the Indigo Girls, the folk rock duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. "Closer to Fine," the lead single off the duo's 1989 eponymous second album, was prominently featured in the film, including the moment Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, decides to drive out of Barbieland and into the "real world."
Turning on her car radio, Robbie starts singing along, ending in a heartfelt "Closer I am to fine!" before stowaway Ken (Ryan Gosling) pops up from the backseat, singing along himself and startling Barbie in the process.
Bringing even more attention to the song, the Barbie soundtrack featured a cover of "Closer to Fine" by Brandi and Catherine Carlile.
In an interview with Variety, Saliers says that having not grown up playing with Barbie dolls, she wasn't quite sure what to expect when she and Ray were presented with a licensing agreement for "Closer to Fine." After learning that Gerwig was set to direct though, the duo was put at ease.
"When the trailer came out, our listening audience lost their minds," Saliers says. "As a fan of both Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, to see and hear them singing a song I wrote was just mind-blowing. It was a surprise that fell out of the sky, like a gift from heaven, for sure."
Saliers says she didn't know when they signed off on the licensing agreement that Barbie would feature the song at three different occasions, but she calls it the "biggest honor."
The inclusion of "Closer to Fine" in Barbie, the highest-grossing film of 2023, brought a new generation of fans to both the song and the Indigo Girls, nearly 40 years after the trailblazing duo's debut. But that's just one of three films behind the renewed interest in the Indigo Girls.
The duo's music also soundtracks Glitter & Doom, a jukebox musical romance written by Cory Krueckeberg. The film stars Alan Cammish as serious musician Doom and Alex Diaz as carefree circus performer Glitter. Tom Gustafson directed the 2023 film, in which Ray and Saliers also appear as characters named the Doctor and the Dream, respectively.
Finally, and most revealing, is the documentary It's Only Life After All, which takes its title from a lyric in "Closer to Fine." Directed by Alexandria Bombach, the film features interviews with and archival footage of Ray and Saliers, as well as Indigo Girl fans.
Ray and Saliers wanted It's Only Life After All to focus on community, in every sense of the word. There are the communities that have supported them from the beginning, like Little Five Points, the club in Atlanta where the duo got their start, and R.E.M., who asked the Indigo Girls to open for them on their 1989 "Green" tour.
The documentary also looks at the communities Ray and Saliers — who are coming to Spokane's Fox Theater on Sept. 29 — have advocated for throughout their career, including animal, reproductive, LGBTQ+ and Indigenous environmental rights, as well as voter education.
"We don't want it to be a vanity film," Ray tells The Guardian. "We want it to be about the community, because that's where we came from and that's what we're part of still. And it's bigger than us, really."
"Instead of feeling like, 'Here's a movie about y'all,' it feels more like here's a movie about the power of music and community," Saliers says in an interview with Lavender magazine. "Especially for queer folks or people who don't fit inside a box, for them to have an openness and expression. And for us to go through our hard times in life together."
The trailer features a clip of actor Woody Harrelson introducing the pair to a crowd of screaming fans with "I'm in love with them, just like you are. Here they are, the Indigo Girls!" But as detailed in It's Only Life After All, reception around the Indigo Girls from the music industry and media wasn't always so exuberant.
"We were immediately drawn to each other," Ray says in the film's trailer. "When we started singing together, an explosion went off, and I was like 'This is it.' But something about how you had to be as a girl didn't fit in with what we wanted to be as the Indigo Girls."
In the trailer, Saliers says very few queer musicians were out during the early years of the Indigo Girls because they feared for their careers. Another clip shows Ray talking about the lack of coverage the Indigo Girls received from mainstream magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone.
"I'm told the reason for our lack of press was our lack of radio play, but I know that it's the fact that we're political lesbians," Ray says.
The documentary, an official selection of the Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca film festivals, also touches on Ray's experiences with gender dysphoria, which she has spoken about in the past, and Saliers recovery from alcoholism, which she discusses for the first time.
Speaking with the Guardian, Saliers says the movie confirmed "the reality that we had gone through some things, that we faced pushback societally for being gay, and that we experienced sexism and homophobia, and we experienced self-homophobia as a result of all the forces."
Because Ray and Saliers were brave enough to fight that pushback, they've built a decades-long career, making waves both with their earnest, from-the-heart music and intrepid activism.
Musically speaking, that career includes 16 studio albums, a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording for Indigo Girls and an induction into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame. It all led to the duo's latest album, 2020's Look Long.
On Look Long, Ray and Saliers sing about prejudice and racism in the South ("Shit Kickin'"), gun violence ("Muster"), the quest for personal liberation for all ("Howl at the Moon") and their families ("Favorite Flavor," a call-and-response between Ray and her daughter, and "Sorrow and Joy," an elegy for Saliers' younger sister.)
On the title track, the pair sings about hope for the country. "There's a reason, there's a reason that they call it a Hail Mary / It's all or nothing on a prayer / On the brink of loss we take our last shots / With my shaky faith, will you still be there."
"It means let's lament our limitations, but let's also look beyond what's right in front of us, take the long view of things and strive to do better," Saliers says in a press release.
Looking at the long view of their career, Ray and Saliers are ready to get back into the studio after the pandemic and a very cinema-centric couple of years. They also took time away from the Indigo Girls as Ray toured behind her seventh solo album, 2022's If It All Goes South, and Saliers worked on musical theater projects. Tours in support of Melissa Etheridge and Amos Lee also preceded the duo's current headlining tour.
"There will be a next album, it's just been such a busy time," Saliers tells Lavender magazine.
New album or not, the duo has been playing to larger crowds thanks to the renewed interest from Barbie, Glitter & Doom and It's Only Life After All, with fans bringing more energy and enthusiasm to their live shows, the pair says.
"People that had followed us for a long time, when they saw this stuff happening, they used it as a moment for them to influence their peers to take back up the idea of coming out to see us play," Ray tells the Guardian.
After decades of creating in spite of a system that worked to soften their voices, Ray and Saliers have finally started to receive the rewards from all their hard work and some very long-overdue praise. It's something they're both still getting used to.
"Going to Sundance and being in Tribeca [with It's Only Life After All], that was thrilling, and then to have Barbie on the heels of that, or in the midst of it, it's kind of like 'Wow, I guess if you stick around long enough, something like this can happen to you.' It does feel like a dream come true." ♦
Indigo Girls, Stephanie Anne Johnson • Sun, Sept. 29 at 7:30 pm • $45-$65 • All ages • The Fox Theater • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • foxtheaterspokane.org
