Danish pop group Aqua made waves back in 1997 with their hit single "Barbie Girl," but they haven't
really made a splash in the states since. With "Barbie" setting box office records,
it's time to find out just what happened to Aqua.
"We're a lot more than just the 'Barbie' band!"
Once Aqua joined the ranks of international bands whose debut U.S. singles just blew up
all over the place, the band's stateside fortunes rested in the hands of its label, Universal-MCA.
In regions where "Barbie Girl" had similarly gone nuclear,
the follow-up singles like "Doctor Jones" and "My Oh My" had generally done pretty
well. In the United Kingdom, "Doctor Jones" even landed the band a second No. 1 single.
But in the states, Universal decided to follow "Barbie Girl" with a tune that even
the band wasn't particularly fond of: "Lollipop (Candyman)," which failed to crack the top 20.
A quarter-century later in 2022, speaking with Rolling Stone about their all-too-brief
flirtation with American superstardom, the band members still sounded pretty
peeved about the decision. Keyboardist and percussionist Søren Rasted said,
"We didn't think that song was a hit. That was a weird decision."
Vocalist Lene Nystrøm agreed, telling the magazine,
"I think maybe 'Doctor Jones' would have been a better choice in America, but there was so much
politics at that point. There were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, a lot of people
that wanted to be a part of it, but the second single should have been left to us to decide."
"Lollipop" marked the last time Aqua even sniffed the American charts until 2023,
when Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice's "Barbie World," from the soundtrack to Greta Gerwig's
"Barbie," handed the band a second top 10 hit by virtue of sampling "Barbie Girl."
"Barbie Girl" helped to make Aqua's debut album,
"Aquarium," a triple-platinum smash in the U.S., and it sold about 11 million copies overseas.
"You never think it's gonna happen, y'know, and it did. It went from, y'know — overnight success."
Any successful musician will tell you it's tough to follow up that kind of success,
and sure enough, the band's follow-up LP — 2000's "Aquarius" — was a bit of a letdown.
It barely registered a blip on the radar in the U.S., peaking at No. 82 on the Billboard chart.
Its international sales, though, were nothing to sneeze at — it moved about 1.7 million copies,
qualifying for platinum status in eight countries.
"Aquarius" even spawned some significant hit singles overseas,
including "Cartoon Heroes," which was the top single in Denmark in 2000,
and "Around the World," which cracked the top 10 and stayed there for 15 weeks.
As sophomore slumps go, it wasn't the worst,
and the band might have been poised for future success — but unfortunately,
right about the time "Aquarius" dropped, the band had to deal with a pretty major legal distraction.
In 2000, the Mattel Corporation — manufacturers of the Barbie Doll
and all of her various associates and accessories — finally decided
to take action regarding Aqua's hit tune, which included lyrics like,
"You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere" and "I'm a blonde bimbo girl in a fantasy world."
"Nope."
"Wait – what?"
Looking straight past a disclaimer on the liner notes for "Aquarium"
stating explicitly that Mattel did not in any way endorse the song,
the company's head honchos threw down their hats and stomped on them,
then filed a lawsuit against MCA claiming ... well, anything its lawyers could think of.
Speaking with Rolling Stone, the band's lawyer Russell Frackman said,
"The lawsuit had 11 different claims. They pretty much threw the kitchen sink
at us [...] They even claimed that [Aqua] infringed on what they called 'Barbie Pink.'"
Lene Nystrøm called the suit "hilarious," pointing out that it only served to raise
the song's profile yet further, while Søren Rasted put on his conspiracy theory hat to
claim that the whole thing was organized between Mattel and MCA for publicity.
In any event, after two years of litigation, Judge Alex Kozinski ruled in favor of the music label
in 2002, concluding his opinion with the illest mic drop to ever be issued in a judicial ruling:
"The parties are advised to chill."
In a bizarre footnote to the whole thing, Mattel in 2009 licensed "Barbie Girl" (with modified
lyrics, of course) to use in a new Barbie advertising campaign. Nystrøm's response?
"That's what they should have done from the start."
Getting dragged into court over their biggest hit
would be enough to take the wind out of the sails of any band, but initially,
the whole kerfuffle didn't seem to bother the members of Aqua too much.
"Wow, that's so cool!"
As reported by Billboard, in the middle of the whole thing in 2001,
the band was playing festivals in Scandinavia,
trotting out new material for a third album, which they claimed would be coming out soon.
However, it was also reported at the time that the individual members were at work on
solo projects — and in August of that year, Aqua surprised its fans by calling it quits,
though it was made clear that the split might only be temporary. In a statement, the band said,
"We have looked each other straight in the eye and reached the conclusion that,
for the moment, the spark is missing."
Lene Nystrøm and fellow vocalist René Dif were said to be focusing on their solo work,
while Søren Rasted and guitarist Claus Norreen intended to continue working together,
with the door left open for a reunion at some indeterminate point down the road.
That third album the band had been teasing was scuttled — and
the next time Nystrøm dropped new music, it was as a solo artist.
In 2003, Lene Nystrøm stormed back onto the pop scene with her solo LP "Play With Me." Well,
she didn't storm so much as she sort of hesitantly tip-toed back onto the pop scene,
and the record was met with a less-than enthusiastic response.
Actually, that's not quite accurate — it was met with virtually no response,
with the single "It's Your Duty" failing to even come within shouting distance of
the U.S. or U.K. pop charts. Unsurprisingly, the album remains Nystrøm's only solo effort to date.
This time period wasn't all bad news for the singer, however. She received
a writing credit on the single "No Good Advice" by U.K. girl group Girls Aloud,
a No. 2 single in the band's home country.
Years later, Girls Aloud would honor Nystrøm's contribution to their success
in an interesting fashion: their 2008 LP "Out of Control" featured as a
bonus track a cover version of "We Wanna Party," a deep cut from "Play With Me."
While Lene Nystrøm played it safe with her solo effort,
sticking to the dance-pop that made her famous, Søren Rasted decided to take a big
swing with his post-Aqua project, which he called Lazyboy (and, later, Lazy B).
He didn't just switch up genres — he made a full-on attempt to invent a new one,
which he called "Rhythm'n'Speak." So what does that sound like? Hip-hoppy
beats accompanied by spoken word samples of TV news broadcasts, random people on the street,
game shows, and whatever other weirdness struck Rasted's fancy.
Reviews of the 2004 LP, titled "Lazyboy TV," were absolutely brutal,
while still singling out for praise its lead single, "Underwear Goes Inside the
Pants." That tune managed to crack the top 40 in the U.K., which constituted
Rhythm'n'Speak's one brief moment in the spotlight before it faded away forever.
Aqua ended their hiatus as the aughts drew to a close.
"We needed to detox a little. We needed an Aqua detox."
In 2009, the band debuted three new singles in support of their "Greatest Hits" release,
and in 2011, they dropped "Megalomania," their first studio album in over a decade.
The album sported a more mature sound,
with slightly more adult themes than being a Barbie Girl in a Barbie World,
and fans in the band's home country were receptive, with the record going to No. 2 there.
The album's singles "How R U Doin?" and "Playmate to Jesus" both charted inside
the top 20 in Denmark, and reflecting Aqua's new mature-yet-playful aesthetic, the final track
sported the band's greatest song title ever: "If the World Didn't Suck (We Would All Fall Off)."
In an interview with Renowned for Sound, the band explained that their new approach
wasn't so much a reinvention as a natural progression. René Dif told the outlet,
"We like to keep the Aqua sound new and refreshing and interesting. We
will always be a pop band that will always be in your face. We tried
to do a balance between doing a good pop song and keeping things current."
Dif also acknowledged that the continued support of their fan base made it a
no-brainer to ditch the solo sojourns and give them what they wanted. He added,
"Our fans are a big part of us getting back together and
staying together. There is still a lot of nostalgia and demand for Aqua music."
Since the release of "Megalomania" more than a decade ago, Aqua has been a near-constant
presence on music festival stages and nostalgia tours around the world. While the fact that
they've sold a ridiculous number of records means that all of its members likely have no pressing
financial need to continue performing, they do so anyway, and at a steady clip — the band
played eight festival dates in 2022 alone and are still touring the U.S. into 2023.
The reason for this is simple: the members of Aqua are fully committed to their concept,
and that concept just works best live. In their conversation with Rolling Stone, René Dif said,
"Every time we play, there are hardcore fans and new fans. When they see us perform,
they understand the whole concept of Aqua. We're a pretty wild band when we play. We
sometimes say that we're performing like a rock band […] We kick ass every time."
The band also revealed that a fourth, long-awaited album is on the way,
with work having begun in the middle of lockdown in 2021. Lene Nystrøm shared
that while fans can expect a continued maturation of their sound, they should
not look for the band to swing too hard away from the aesthetic that made them famous.
"Søren wants it to be a little more serious. I'm like, 'Nope. I want happy music. Come on,
dude, you can do it.' I'm hoping he hears me. Nobody wants dark music from Aqua. Let's just
agree on that."
When you've reached the pinnacle of pop stardom with a song as, well,
singular as "Barbie Girl," you're bound to have a lot of contradictory feelings
about that song, and this is certainly the case for Aqua.
In their Rolling Stone sitdown, the band admitted that having a legacy so closely
tied to one song is a mixed bag. Can it get a little bit tiring being obliged to play
"Barbie Girl" every single time they perform? Yes, of course it can. Do they play it anyway,
every single time? Yes, of course they do. Søren Rasted told the magazine,
"Sometimes three times in a row is a lot. But I feel so
fortunate that everybody pretty much in the whole world knows that song."
Lene Nystrøm concurred, saying,
"I feel really proud of the song. I have to admit
there were times back in the day where I was like, 'Oh, my God, not again.'"
Rasted also noted just how incorrect he thinks the "one-hit wonder" label is,
pointing out the overseas success of "Doctor Jones" and "My Oh My"
before … pretty much just owning the label anyway. He told Rolling Stone,
"I've never felt like a one-hit wonder ... [but] that song is a gift. I won't
be bothered by that, even though a lot of people probably want to kill us."
Nystrøm then further acknowledged the elephant in the room in hilarious fashion, saying,
"I can totally understand people getting pissed at
["Barbie Girl"]. It can be super annoying. It sticks like glue."