The Real Origin Of Aqua's Iconic 'Barbie Girl' Music Video
A music video can make or destroy an artist. While Rihanna's video for "Pon de Replay" may not have been anything else spectacular, it no doubt helped propel her first unmarried into the giant leagues, ultimately environment her up for one of the most impressive careers in the music business. The similar can be stated for Aqua's "Barbie Girl".
While many imagine Aqua to be a one-hit-wonder from the late 1990s, the Danish-Norweigian Europop band in reality made sufficient songs to excursion the international to this present day. But there is no doubt that their 1997 hit "Barbie Girl" is what they are best recognized for. Despite the track receiving backlash for its inappropriate elements, it became an anthem of a complete technology. And a catchy one at that. Even people who hate the music know most of the words. And Aqua's music video is still in style. At the time of this writing, it has greater than 1 billion (yes, with a 'B') views on Youtube. Here's the fact about how they actually made the music video...
The Director Hated The "Barbie Girl" Song
Despite getting into an overly public lawsuit with Mattel (the owners of Barbie and Ken) Aqua decided to double-down on the premise of their hit music in its music video. A couple of months after the track got here out, as part of their debut album "Aquarium", Aqua's individuals René Dif, Lene Nystrøm, Søren Rasted, and Claus Norreen hired Peder Pederson to direct the video. Funnily sufficient, Peder was once one of the individuals who actually actually, in point of fact did not like the track when it came out.
"I was just starting out as a director, and it was hard," Peder Pedersen mentioned in an oral history of "Barbie Girl" by Rolling Stone. "The night before I got the request to do 'Barbie Girl,' I was doing some grainy black-and-white art stuff in a basement. While we were setting up, 'Barbie Girl' came on the radio. I remember saying [angrily], 'What the h*ll is this?' The next day, I got a call asking if I wanted to do the video for it. I went [cheerfully], 'Yes, of course!'"
Despite having no love for the song, Peder handled the musicians and their music with admire. So much in order that he used to be employed to direct a couple of of their music movies, together with for "Doctor Jones" and "Around The World".
Where Did The "Barbie Girl" Song Music Video Come From?
Peder Pedersen used to be the major in the back of the thought of the "Barbie Girl" music video, which was filmed in simply two days in a warehouse in Copenhagen.
"In my view, the video needed to be like the song, cartoonish, that kind of feel," director Peder Pedersen explained. "That’s also what the group had in mind. We had a session where we went, 'What does Barbie do? What kind of props does she have? Well, she has a house, a car, a horse, a hairdryer, a telephone, a dog …' Then I went back and did a complete storyboard for it. And we had a timeline saying, 'Barbie does a lot of things, and it ends in a party.'"
While the existence of a Barbie used to be in the end the inspiration for the music video, Peder also pulled concepts from a host of extremely sudden assets.
"We had watched Spike Jonze’s video for 'Sabotage' by the Beastie Boys. I love those crime movies and exploitation movies that they were referencing. It was an inspiration since it had the Beastie Boys playing characters," Peder endured. "That was a good reference for me to say, 'If we can go this way and have a kind of irony, we can go a long way.' Our references for the looks were Hanna-Barbera cartoons like The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo. That made it look different from all the other videos."
Who Sang "Barbie Girl"?
The main voices in the "Barbie Girl" track are René Dif and Lene Nystrøm. The latter played the titular persona in the music video, but she completely did not wish to seem like a Barbie. This is what Peder at first wanted, but Lene used to be really adversarial to the concept. This sooner or later caused struggle on the set.
"I don’t get angry very often. You can stretch me far," Aqua's lead singer Lene Nystrøm said in an interview with Rolling Stone. "But I had my own kind of opinion about that. I didn’t want to look like Barbie. That’s against the whole point of the song. I came into the dressing room and the stylists were there. We had a long, hard argument. Universal came in. The director came in. And I just stood my ground."
Despite some conflicts, the music video got here together as in keeping with the imaginative and prescient of the director. And even he was stunned via how a lot of a good fortune the video was deemed.
"We were all pretty young," Peder said. "It’s not like today where you have to think about everything. We didn’t know it would go and be viewed so many times."
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