Kill the fish

"I'm a Barbie girl/in the Barbie world/wrapped in plastic/it's fantastic ..." Aieeee!
 
It's a cheesy social comment on cheese! Art imitating art! Music so bad it's ... bad! Thanks a lot, Mattel. Without your ridiculous protests that a racy dance track called Barbie Girl constitutes a copyright infringement, I might never have had to listen to this sorry, sugary slab of plastic.
 
Barbie Girl aside, there's enough bubblegum pop here to really do damage to your teeth (check out Lollipop (Candyman) for a literal example). The cheery, oversimplistic dance fused tunes hark back to the Stock Aitken Waterman days of the mid-80s.
 
It's a shame that the album was marred by the Barbie Girl debacle. If you take some time to actually listen to some of the other songs, you'd find that Aqua can actually write a damn fine pop song, like 'Turn Back Time'. This moody number is a million miles away from the style of Barbie Girl and sadly will probably be lost in the image Aqua seems to be carving for themselves.
 
All in all, a half decent debut effort for those who are wearing out their Hanson and Spice Girls discs.

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