‘Barbie Girl’ Creators Aqua Says Song ‘Keeps On Giving’

“Barbie Girl” won’t be living in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie world, but the band behind the hit track isn’t too upset about it. “A good melody never dies, it just keeps on giving. And ‘Barbie Girl’ is a perfect example of that,” Aqua vocalist Lene Nystrøm told Variety. Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, Barbie will rollerblade into theaters July 21, 2023. Nystrøm suggested that including the song on the movie’s soundtrack would have been doing too much — like putting “cheese on cheese” — but predicts the movie will still bring a lot of attention to Aqua. The Scandinavian band released a 25th anniversary edition of their debut album earlier this month and currently has plans to go on more tours. They’re still proud of “Barbie Girl,” which has been dissected over the years for a deeper meaning about life in plastic. “We had the line, ‘C’mon Barbie, let’s go party,’ and thought it was great,” keyboardist Søren Rasted recalled. “There were a lot of headlines about plastic surgery at the time, which influenced us, but we really just wanted to make a fun song. We didn’t put that much thought into it.” The result to this approach was a song so popular even Mattel took notice via an eventually dismissed lawsuit. Perhaps, then, the toy company was the one that intervened to keep Aqua off Barbie’s soundtrack. Or as Rasted joked in the Variety interview, maybe it was the other way around. “We should say we turned it down,” Rasted playfully suggested. “Ryan Gosling is not good enough!” Now why is Gosling in it? Poor guy already knows no one cares about Ken.

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