Aqua Isn't Upset That 'Barbie Girl' Won't Be In Greta Gerwig's Movie

If you were alive in the late '90s, you've almost certainly heard Aqua's "Barbie Girl." At once a catchy earworm and a deeply silly novelty tune, it remains one of the more inexplicable songs to ever top the charts. Listeners almost certainly will have a different relationship to the song depending on how old they were when they heard it, but as a very young kid in the '90s, it was a song I heard — and loved — mostly at sleepovers, where it was in heavy rotation. I most distinctly remember dancing to it at a cousin's birthday party, after we set up her new password journal but before we stuffed ourselves with brightly colored birthday cake ice cream.

That type of hot-pink-tinged memory is right in line with the magic of "Barbie Girl," a celebratory song that imagines a world where "life is plastic" and "it's fantastic." You'd think the kitschy, cheeky girlhood anthem would be a perfect fit for Greta Gerwig's upcoming "Barbie" film, but apparently, Aqua's declarations of "ooh-oh!" will be nowhere to be found when the movie hits theaters. In a new retrospective of the 25-year-old song from Variety, Aqua members Søren Rasted and Lene Nystrøm confirm that the Warner Bros. "Barbie" flick won't use the song, but they seem pretty cool with it.

"We should say we turned it down," keyboardist Rasted joked to the outlet, adding, "Ryan Gosling is not good enough!" Nystrøm, who sings for the band and provided vocals on the song along with bandmate René Dif, implies the song may have been a bit too campy for the movie, saying it would be like "cheese on cheese." In the end, she says, "I totally understand why they didn't use it, but it's going to bring us a lot of attention, no matter what."