As the movie Barbie finally hits theaters, the soundtrack LP Barbie: The Album aims for a similar cultural conquest. And as with the Greta Gerwig-directed film — an unusual but inspired collaboration between director and film franchise — the artists submitting soundtrack songs come in many different flavors of weirdness.
The soundtrack campaign kicked off with their most normal single: neo-disco hitmaker Dua Lipa’s frothy “Dance the Night,” which was released back in May, has already cracked the top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is a solid pop radio hit. From there the tracks have become more whimsical and eclectic. Latin superstar Karol G’s reggaetón song “Watati,” named after leading actor Aldo Ranks’ favorite nonsensical exclamation, blends Barbie’s beach vibes with a dembow beat. Sam Smith’s Man I Am applies her recent shift to high-camp art-pop to the Ken character, with a very gender-nonconforming twist for 2023. Even more whimsical is Billie Eilish’s watery, heartbreaking film What Was I Made For?, which explores the film’s existential plot while also giving Eilish a chance to play the saddest dress-up game ever.
As odd as these titles are, I would argue that the most unlikely Barbie song of all is the one that has hit the highest charts: Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World,” which debuted at number 7 on the Hot 100 in June and will likely remain Barbie’s most successful hit.
However, I’m not saying that the song itself is funny. In fact, you could say Barbie World was inevitable — Minaj has been comparing herself to Barbie for so long that her fans call themselves Barbz. And as for Ice Spice, Pink Pantheress and Taylor Swift have proven over the past six months that including the Bronx drill-pop rapper on a single is one of the surest paths to a radio hit in 2023.
No, I mean that Barbie World is unlikely because it’s both officially linked to the Barbie movie and contains Aqua’s 1997 single Barbie Girl. If you know the twisted, controversial history of Aqua’s hit, it’s a wonder Mattel has brought anything close to its authorized IP with this quarter-century-old song. Over the past decade-plus, the toymaker has significantly toned down the song parodying its flagship product, but it’s taken a while.
If you lived in the late ’90s and were near a radio or MTV, you’ve heard “Barbie Girl.” Its mercilessly chirping Europop lyrics (“I’m a Barbie girl in the Barbie world/Life in plastic, it’s awesome”) contrasted with a relentless post-Spice Girls beat. Norwegian singer Lene Nystrøm played the role of Barbie and Danish singer and rapper René Dif played the role of Ken. Dif’s gruff “Come on, Barbie, let’s go party” is one of the song’s most indestructible catchy tunes.
“Barbie Girl” was loathed by rock fans – it was named the worst song of the ’90s in a 2011 Rolling Stone readers’ poll – and was hugely popular in the rest of America and much of the world. It topped the charts in more than a dozen countries, including the UK, where “Aqua” had two No. 1 follow-ups: the more moody “Turn Back Time” and the Indiana Jones-inspired “Doctor Jones”. In America, where the Scandinavian pop band was essentially a one-hit wonder, “Barbie Girl” propelled Aqua’s debut album Aquarium alone to triple platinum sales. Aqua’s US label MCA pulled off this trick through chart gimmicks: At the height of the music industry’s great war on singles, MCA boosted terrestrial radio airing of “Barbie Girl” for weeks before releasing a retail single. This allowed the song to debut on the Hot 100 as high as No. 7 (coincidentally at No. 7, where “Barbie World” debuted that year), but MCA deliberately released a small number of singles to compel most consumers craving “Barbie” to purchase the full-length Aqua CD. Those who felt cheated were in good company: by the end of 1997, two million Americans bought Aquarium, by 1999 it was three million.
Mattel, the owner of Barbie and a big supporter of the brand, was definitely saddened. Not only had the four performers-songwriters of Aqua failed to seek permission for their references to Mattel’s property, but they also had Barbie and Ken as – horror-! That classiness is actually the funniest thing about Barbie Girl. The lyrics are PG rated but hint at a greater level of naughtiness left to the viewer’s mind. “Put me on, make it tight, I’m your dolly,” sings Nystrøm’s Barbie, to which Difs Ken replies, “Kiss me here, touch me there, handkerchief.” (Remember: this was the same decade Madonna hit the top 10 with her songs about hanky-panky and “a good spanky.”)
Mattel wasn’t amused. The same month that “Barbie Girl” and “Aquarium” debuted on the Billboard charts, the toy maker sued Aqua and MCA Records in federal court for trademark infringement. And they didn’t just protect their copyright, which would have been adamant but predictable. In the lawsuit, Mattel specifically questioned the “sexual and other offensive themes” the song associated with Barbie. Lawyers for MCA and Aqua countered that Mattel’s executives are basically the ones with dirty minds. Lower courts continued to dismiss Mattel’s claims, but the toymaker continued to appeal. The fight had become “ugly,” reported CNN. MCA once counterclaimed for defamation after Mattel likened the record label to “a bank robber.”
Barbie is a joy of improbable proportions
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Amid all the lawsuits and counterclaims, Aqua threw gas into the fire. At the 2001 Eurovision Song Contest, held in Aqua’s native country of Denmark, the band performed an out-of-competition medley of their hits. During her rendition of “Barbie Girl” on live television, Nystrøm’s Barbie called Dif’s Ken a “filthy bastard” and kicked off the performance by telling him to “fuck off.”
After five years of appeal, Mattel took its complaint to the Supreme Court, which dismissed the lawsuit without comment. In the final ruling that stood, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected the idea that consumers were misled by the song, and appellate judge Alex Kozinski’s opinion eclipsed Mattel, noting that the original ’50s Barbie doll resembled a “German street runner” and still possessed a “fictional character.” “Fame often comes with unwanted attention,” Kozinski wrote, concluding his statement with a warning to both companies: “Parties are advised to calm down.” (Subsequent reports revealed that Kozinski had his own issues with giving “unwanted attention”: He abruptly withdrew from court in 2017 after multiple allegations of sexual harassment.)
After years of a scorched-earth approach, what would have made Mattel change its mind on Barbie Girl? Maybe it was a bit of competition. In the mid-1980s, Barbie suffered a sales slump that was widely attributed to the introduction of MGA Entertainment’s millennial Bratz dolls. In 2005, Mattel reported an incredible 30 percent drop in Barbie sales. New management was deployed to reverse the slump, and among the new team’s decisions was to keep the former enemies – especially Aqua – closer together. In 2009, Mattel licensed Barbie Girl not only for a new Fab Girl Barbie commercial, but also for a YouTube music video that featured a new Barbie dance and rewrote the song with new, more adult lyrics.
“We weren’t always in love with each other,” Mattel’s senior vice president of Barbie marketing told the New York Times that same year of the company’s longstanding feud with MCA and Aqua. But “the beauty of Barbie,” added the Mattel exec, is that she can “kiss and do makeup.” It took nearly a decade for the Barbie slump to reverse, but by 2018 the rather subdued Mattel had brought Barbie sales back above the $1 billion mark — and that was before Gerwig’s film was greenlit.
Which brings us back to Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s Barbie World. Honestly, Minaj’s Barbz army of fans would probably have thrown a tantrum if their queen wasn’t allowed to join the film’s soundtrack, so maybe Mattel’s green light was predetermined. Nonetheless, 14 years after Mattel buried the hatchet and brought Aqua under the tent, Barbie World is further testament to the toymaker’s clever 21st-century approach to pulling the joke. It’s hard to imagine the more starchy Mattel of the late ’90s would endorse Minaj lyrics like “That Pussy So Cold, We Just Chillin’ Out” or Ice Spice’s “I Give the Box With No Shoes In It.”
And then there are the aqua samples and references. Minaj has a history of interpolating and scoring old hits, from 2014’s “Baby Got Back” sample “Anaconda,” which slipped to #2 on the Hot 100, to last year’s Rick James remix “Super Freaky Girl,” which hit #1 on the Hot 100 in August. In comparison, the aqua interpolations are more subtle in Barbie World – a slightly rearranged version of Barbie Girl. The tune runs under the title, but it is not until the song fades away that Nystrøm’s original chorus (apparently re-sung by another singer) can be heard in full. Nonetheless, it’s 2023 and the music industry is now very specific when it comes to giving song credits, which is why Barbie World gives Aqua full artist credit – the official Billboard listing reads “Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice with Aqua.”
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Despite its high chart peak — that debut at No. 7 is poetic, considering Aqua debuted at exactly the same spot on the Hot 100 in 1997 — “Barbie World” hasn’t been a lasting hit. It launched with great success three weeks ago and then dropped out of the top 40 at number 49 this week. As I did in my series “Slate No. One can imagine that the release of the Barbie movie this weekend could change things up a bit.
Still, “Barbie World” saved Aqua from one-hit-wonder status in America just by debuting in the Top 10 a few weeks ago – even though her new hit is actually just a reboot of her old hit. The original “Barbie Girl” not only outlived Mattel’s army of lawyers, but also made the company one of its most powerful allies. And whatever rock snobs think of “Barbie Girl,” the song has become so long-lived that earlier this week, rock star none other than Chris Martin was asked by two fans to sing it live on stage. Though it’s been 26 years since Aqua’s infamous anthem was first released, Martin still remembered the melody.