Think what you want about ‘Barbie Girl.’ Whether it’s a masterpiece, a grating song, a sticky earworm, or a relic of another era, it doesn’t matter. The truth is that 25 years have passed since Aqua first released it into the world, and thanks to ‘Barbie,’ it remains on everyone’s lips. If you’ve never danced to the rhythm of “Come on, Barbie, let’s go party,” let me tell you that you’ve made some poor life choices.
Life in plastic, it’s fantastic
Aqua wasn’t always called Aqua. In 1995, they were known as Joyspeed and were still trying to find their sound, which they achieved thanks to a synthesizer capable of turning notes into various instruments. While they were experimenting with it and composing songs like ‘Doctor Jones’ for their debut album, luck struck when Soren Rasted, one of the group members, attended an art exhibition filled with Barbie dolls and thought, “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.”
It may seem like a song like ‘Barbie Girl’ is easy to make, but far from it: everyone wanted to contribute lines, change chords, remove sexual innuendos, or make the rhymes less cheesy. And when it came time to record, there was an extra challenge: Lene Nystrom, the lead singer, initially sang with a very high-pitched tone and insisted on lowering it a bit to avoid straining her throat during concerts. Yes, all those high notes were not achieved through computer manipulation.
The song was released to the world with much more sexually suggestive lyrics than anyone would have expected (“You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere”), and luck would have it that it caught the attention of Peder Pedersen, a film director who was doing video art in his basement at the time and was able to direct the music video the following day. The music video has gone down in history with over one billion views on YouTube, but it was actually improvised on the spot.
In fact, one of the challenges was that Lene refused to follow the storyboard, wear a blonde wig, and act as Barbie, so they had to hire two actors to portray Barbie and Ken. The two actors didn’t know each other, but during the two days of filming, they fell in love and are now married with two children. What brings Aqua together, let no man tear apart. Success came, the tours, the money… and the inevitable legal battle with Mattel.
The truth is, the toy company didn’t have much to say in the end. In fact, at some point, they simply complained that the song wasn’t called ‘Party Girl.’ Aqua won after five years of legal battles and was able to perform the song in all their concerts. Literally, in every single one. They were even invited to Mexico once just to perform that song and then leave! Nowadays, they are preparing their fourth album, despite losing a member due to sheer exhaustion. They are on an international tour, and of course, they still don’t hate ‘Barbie Girl.’ How could they?
I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world…
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