Aqua’s iconic ‘Barbie Girl’ will not be on the soundtrack of Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie film, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in lead characters.
Despite the song not being a part of the film’s soundtrack, the Danish-Norwegian Europop band is excited for the film nonetheless.
In a recent interview, lead vocalist Lene Nystrøm said that using the group’s 1997 hit along with Aqua’s debut album, Aquarium, in the film would be too on-the-nose, or “cheese on cheese.”
“I totally understand why they didn’t use it, but it’s going to bring us a lot of attention, no matter what,” Nystrøm said.
Keyboardist Søren Rasted, on the other hand, joked about an alternative narrative: “We should say we turned it down. Ryan Gosling is not good enough!”
Just grateful for the attention to the song the film will bring, Nystrøm added, “I totally understand why they didn’t use it, but it’s going to bring us a lot of attention, no matter what.”
Barbie Girl, which turns 25 this year, became an international phenomenon in the late ‘90s. It sold more than 1.4 million copies in the U.S. and topped the U.K. chart for a month. The song also came with some backlash, sparking criticism that it was an insult to feminism and prompting a trademark infringement lawsuit from Mattel.
“You had to watch what you were saying all the time, sometimes our words were twisted,” Nystrøm said of the lawsuit.
The upcoming Barbie film is directed by Greta Gerwig and co-written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling lead the cast as Barbie and Ken.
In addition to them, the film also stars America Ferrera, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Issa Rae, Hari Nef, and Ncuti Gatwa. Plot details have not yet been revealed.
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