Re-Listening: Aqua — Aquarium
Published Oct. 14, 2008
MOVE is introducing a new feature called 'Re-Listening,' where we take an album from our youth (think the Backstreet Boys or Hanson's early work) and listen to it again with a critical ear. Hopefully, it will encourage you to break out your old CDs and tapes again.
Aqua released eight songs from Aquarium as singles, and if you remember the seven other than "Barbie Girl," you were paying more attention to late-'90s Scandanavian house than I was.
"Barbie Girl" is still an unimpeachable classic of legendary proportions, a rightful '90s cultural touchstone that only gets better when you're no longer too young to appreciate the song's revolting creepiness.
I remember owning Aquarium and I remember listening to it, but I don't remember anything else about it other than that on the cover the band is pictured underwater, presumably in an aquarium, with two randomly placed starfish.
The album is, as you'd expect, a 5 million-gallon bucket of Eurocheese, but Aquarium is, in doses, kind of incredible. It's a clinic in pulsating synthpop, and though listening to it straight through might make you delusional, delirious and homicidal, its unabashed indulgence in excess and bombardment of hooks are both admirable and really fun.
And fun is what makes Aqua surprisingly great looking back. They spare us Alice DeeJay-style melodrama and just go for frantic glowstick anthems, best evidenced in the also classic "Lollipop (Candyman)" and "Doctor Jones."
There's also a devious sense of humor, both in Aqua's childish take on sex and relationships and in the fact that they go completely over the top. Also, I'm assuming they're trying to always be funny because they let the ridiculous male vocalist (aka Ken) sing on basically every song.
The album's main downfall is that unless you're dropping ecstasy on the regular, the cheesy keyboards and nasally vocals become needles to the eardrums after about 20 minutes. But for those 20 minutes,
Aquarium is all strobe lights and having fun at the age of 12. I don't want much else.
