Aqua Barbie Girl

Every Anniversary should be treated as such. Our friend, Adriana, suggested we do just that with today’s Friday Break: Aqua Barbie Girl.

Highly contagious due to the simple chorus and musical line, Aqua’s song was released in 1997 and was treated as malicious marketing at Mattel’s expense. (you can read more about the song right after the jump)

Very pop-naïve, the Barbie Girl song was written and performed by Danish-Norwegian group Aqua in 1997. Despite the pro and cons, despite of it being voted both on the best and the worst tops of the world, Barbie Girl has sold million copies (more than 8 million copies worldwide).

Singing about Barbie also drew Mattel’s attention – they filed a lawsuit for trademark and copyrights infringement by turning Barbie into a ‘blonde bimbo’. Aqua fired back and filed a lawsuit against Mattel for defamation. Both lawsuits have been dismissed (ultimately with a ruling saying that “The parties are advised to chill.”). The conflict has been used by a journalist (Naomi Klein) and an author (Michael Strangelove) who took advantage of the example offered by this controversy to make their political/economic points.

Aqua’s Barbie Girl has also been covered by few other artists in various musical styles (punk, rock) and languages. But nothing compares to the original 80s plastic praise-the-fantastic-cheap and the fake values! Happy Anniversary, Barbie! (via)