British 90s nostalgia and shite

"Barbie Girl" by Aqua came out in 1997. I was ten years old at the time. All I remember about the song was that it was annoying. I didn't want to play with barbie dolls and I didn't want to listen to songs about them either. Barbies were for girls.

Honestly, the only lyrics I can pull out my head are these (and I might have misremembered them):

I'm a Barbie girl
In a Barbie world
My tits are plastic
They're fantastic

Come on Barbie
Let's go potty
(Ah ah ah yeah)
Come on Barbie
Let's go potty
(Ah ooh, ah ooh)

I've never properly listened to the song before, so I'm going to do that for the first time now.

Undress me everywhere

25 seconds into the song and this happens:

"You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere"?

Is this really the same song from when I was a kid? I don't remember Barbie being... a slut?

Hmm, maybe I'm just hearing things. Probably the rest of the song is normal. Let's see.

Blonde bimbo girl

So the next thing that happens is that Barbie bends over in a sexually suggestive pose.

She then describes herself as a "blonde bimbo girl" and asks Ken (?) to "Dress me up, make it tight"

Is Barbie pretending to give a handjob? She’s shaking a bottle of soap up and down in a way that can only be described as “giving a handjob”. And the bottle of soap looks like a penis.

Hanky panky

Then a bald bloke, who I think is supposed to be Ken but could also be a local sex offender, says "Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky".

HANKY PANKY.

That literally means SEX.

There is now no way to deny that this song is about sex.

You can touch

Barbie then says, "You can touch, you can play".

This song is dirtier than Pornhub.

Beg on my knees

Next Barbie says "Do whatever you please" and "I can beg on my knees".

Bimbo friend

Then Ken literally calls Barbie her "his bimbo friend". And then he invites her to "fool around".

He keeps winking at the camera. Or maybe it’s a nervous tic. He’s probably nervous that the police are going to arrest him for being a sex offender.

Final thoughts

As a 10-year-old kid, all the sexual references went over my head. I thought it was just an annoying song about Barbie, a toy for girls. Little did I know that it had a sexual undercurrent so strong that it would rip all your clothes off and wash them out to sea, leaving you naked, confused and slightly aroused.

"Barbie Girl" was played at my school's disco every week, along with "Sex on the Beach" by T-Spoon (which came out the same year as Barbie Girl, so was 1997 the year of overtly sexually suggestive pop songs being played at children's discos?). "Sex on the Beach" was even more sexually explicit, with lyrics like these:

I wanna have sex on the beach

Come on there's a party

Sex on the beach

Come on there's a party tonight