Does Gen Z know about “Barbie Girl?” If not, young reader, buckle up: “Barbie Girl” was a radio pop song by a Danish group named Aqua, where the vocalists — a bubbly female and a weirdly deep-voiced male, because this was the ’90s and that was a thing — pretended to be Barbie and Ken living their daily plastic lives. The song is the kind of decadent relic that makes one understand the French Revolution a little bit better and reminds us of what a fucked-up time the Clinton Administration truly was. Thankfully, one YouTuber has decided to improve this glittering war crime against culture by asking the age-old question: what if “Barbie Girl” was written by Armenian-American alt-metallers System Of A Down?
We’ll say this for Moonic Productions, who produced this cover: performer Otu sure as hell sounds like Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian when he shouts and sings respectively. The dude’s got Serj’s bellow to a T, and his vocal stylings on the keened Daron sections are spot-on. His singing Serj voice doesn’t quite get Tankian’s cartoonish lilting, but given how solid the cover is overall, we can give it a pass. For those who grew up during the era when “Barbie Girl” was actually being played on the radio, it’s probably sweet relief no matter how accurate it sounds.
Check out System of a Down’s version of “Barbie Girl” below:
And for our younger readers, who may not fully understand what “Barbie Girl” was, we present the original. Just a heads up that it might cause your eyes to bleed, so make sure you have a little Nifelheim cued up to take the edge off if it gets too much.
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Words by Chris Krovatin
