The Moment That Destroyed One-Hit Wonder Aqua's Career

The young Danish-Norwegian pop band Aqua was on top of the world. Their super-catchy single "Barbie Girl" had broken through into the U.S. market and was rocketing up the charts, spurred on by the campy and cartoonish video in heavy rotation on MTV. It was October 1997, and Aqua's song was about to become a worldwide hit. "In some magical way, we came in at just the right time," René Dif, the band's male vocalist, told Rolling Stone in 2022. "The moon, the sun, everything had to stand still at that one second. It did for us. We went from zero to hero pretty fast."

Then Mattel stepped in and seemingly destroyed the band's career, one of many one-hit wonders who have faced similar fateful moments over the years. The toy company that owned Barbie didn't appreciate the song's lyrics, believing they portrayed their signature plastic doll as a bimbo and women in general as sex objects. "We have expressed our extreme dissatisfaction with the song and with what we believe is a strong case for trademark violation," a Mattel spokesperson said at the time (via the Pensacola News Journal). A lawsuit against Aqua's record company, MCA, followed and overshadowed the band. Their next album, while doing well in Europe, didn't achieve anything close to the level of success enjoyed by the band's first album with its mega-hit "Barbie Girl."

The genesis for Aqua's hit song "Barbie Girl" began when Søren Rasted, the band's keyboard player and guitarist, saw an art exhibition in Copenhagen featuring a sculpture made of Barbie dolls. "It made me think of, 'Life in plastic, it's fantastic'," he later recalled. "I thought that was a great line. Then I wrote, 'Come on, Barbie, let's go party.'" The rest of the band, René Dif, female vocalist Lene Nystrøm, and keyboardist Claus Norreen, all chipped in with the lyrics, and the song quickly came together. In the fall 1997, as Aqua's "Barbie Girl" continued its chart-topping success, Mattel and MCA were in discussions over the song. The album's liner notes included a disclaimer that "Barbie Girl" was meant as social commentary and wasn't approved by Mattel. It wasn't enough for the toy maker who filed a federal lawsuit in September of that year.

For the band, "Barbie Girl" was just a fun song about loving yourself as you are and not having plastic surgery (although they later admitted there were plenty of sexual innuendos in it too). With lyrics like "You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere / Imagination, life is your creation" and "I'm a blonde bimbo girl in a fantasy world / Dress me up, make it tight, I'm your dolly" there was enough there for Mattel to go to court over.

In the 1990s, Mattel's sales were going strong thanks to the toy maker's best-selling Barbie ever, the Totally Hair Barbie, so apparently the company had plenty of money to drag out its lawsuit against MCA Records over "Barbie Girl." MCA countersued for defamation. Finally, in 2002, a federal appeals court tossed out both cases, telling both parties "to chill" (per the Kennebec Journal). But by then, Aqua had broken up a year earlier, or at least gone on a long hiatus. They reunited in 2008.

The next year, in a strange turn of events, Mattel licensed "Barbie Girl" for one of its ad campaigns. These days, Aqua, minus Claus Norreen, who left in 2016, continues to tour the world and always includes "Barbie Girl" in their sets. And although they're considered one-hit-wonders in the U.S., they've had other hits in Europe and Asia, something the band members like to point out in interviews.