Barbie Girl  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from I'm a Barbie Girl)
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

"Barbie Girl" is a song in the bubblegum pop genre by the Danish-Norwegian dance-pop group Aqua, who released it in 1997 as their third single overall, and the first United Kingdom release. The song is included on the album Aquarium and was written by Claus Norreen and Søren Nystrøm Rasted after the group saw an exhibit on kitsch culture. The song topped the charts worldwide, particularly in European countries such as the UK, where it was #1 on the charts for three weeks; it was also on top of the charts in Australia for the same length of time, and reached #7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Mattel sued the band, saying they violated the Barbie trademark and turned Barbie into a sex object, referring to her as a "Blonde Bimbo."

Contents

Aqua's Version

History

The song was voted the fourth "Best Number One of All Time" in a VH1 poll, and was featured in spot #32 on VH1's "Most Awesomely Bad Songs... Ever" countdown. An unrelated VH1 countdown, VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders, rated it #88.

The lyrics of the song are about Barbie and Ken, the dolls made by Mattel. Both the song and its music video feature Lene Nystrøm Rasted as Barbie and René Dif as Ken. As such, the lyrics drew the ire of Barbie's corporate owners.

In 2007, Rolling Stone voted Barbie Girl as one of the 20 Most Annoying Songs.

In 2007, MuchMoreMusic voted it at #27, as one of the 50 Guilty Pleasures.

In 2008, it was featured as "one of the worst songs ever played" on The Morning Wrap, the premiere talk show of the Florida Panhandle.

In 2009, Same Difference voted it #2 in their Ultimate Cheese-Fest Top 20 on 4Music.

Blender magazine also voted it at #33, as one of the 50 Worst Songs Ever.

"Barbie Girl" has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide.

Music video

The music video played repeatedly on MTV and helped launch the career of Danish director Peder Pedersen, who designed its cartoon-inspired visuals.

As of February 2009, the video has over 26.5 million views on YouTube.

Mattel's lawsuit

Mattel sued the band, saying they violated the Barbie trademark and turned Barbie into a sex object, referring to her as a "Blonde Bimbo." They alleged the song had violated their copyrights and trademarks of Barbie, and that its lyrics had tarnished the reputation of their trademark and impinged on their marketing plan. Aqua claimed that Mattel injected their own meanings into the song's lyrics and MCA Records was not about to let their hit single be suppressed without a fight. They contested Mattel's claims and countersued for defamation after Mattel had likened MCA to a bank robber.

The lawsuit filed by Mattel was dismissed by the lower courts, and this dismissal was upheld, though Mattel took their case up to the Supreme Court of the United States (Mattel's appeal was later rejected). In 2002, Judge Alex Kozinski ruled the song was protected as a parody under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and also threw out the defamation lawsuit that Aqua's record company filed against Mattel. Kozinski concluded his ruling by saying, "The parties are advised to chill." The case was dismissed, and in the process, it garnered lots of media attention for the song and the band.

This controversy was used by journalist Naomi Klein to make a political point in her book No Logo, where she stated that the monopolies created by copyrights and trademarks are unfairly and differently enforced based on the legal budgets of the conflicting parties and their ability to defend their expressions by hiring lawyers.

Michael Strangelove, author of The Empire of Mind: Digital Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement, suggested that the failure of Mattel to control and determine the meaning of Barbie indicates how the economic system fails to enable complete control over meanings.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Barbie Girl" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools