Aqua Mini Biography

AQUA is a Danish-Norwegian dance-pop group, perhaps best known for their 1997 breakthrough single Barbie Girl. The group formed in 1989 and achieved huge success across the globe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The group managed to top the UK Singles Chart with their first three singles. The group released two albums: Aquarium in 1997 and Aquarius in 2000, before splitting up in July 2001.

The group sold an estimated 33 million albums and singles, making them the most successful Danish band ever.[1]

The band was formed by Lene Nystrøm Rasted (vocals), Rene Dif (vocals), Søren Rasted (keyboard) and Claus Norreen (guitar).

In their prime, AQUA's singles managed to chart top ten in a number of countries where European pop acts would not normally succeed, including the United States, Australia, and Japan. The group also caused controversy with the double entendres in their Barbie Girl single, with the Barbie doll makers Mattel filing a lawsuit against the group. The lawsuit was finally dismissed by a judge in 2002, who ruled "The parties are advised to chill."

Since their 2001 split, Nystrøm, Dif and Rasted have all achieved solo chart success, and Norreen has continued in the music industry remixing other artists' material.

The group has announced the upcoming release of a compilation album featuring new material, and the four original members have confirmed Aqua will reunite for a tour in 2008. This was confirmed at a press event Friday on October 26, 2007. In December 2008 was announced three Aqua concerts in 2009.

Aqua was musically influenced by the eurodance genre that was popular in Europe, Oceania and South America in the 1990s. The style of eurodance was dance music with a female singer and a male rapper. Often the lyrics would be meaningless and not follow the pattern of a traditional pop song. This however was what Aqua changed. Influenced by the recent wave of bubblegum pop started by the Spice Girls, Aqua followed a more traditional verse-chorus structure. Usually, the verse would consist of Lene starting and finishing, while René would sing in the middle. The chorus was mostly sung by Lene. René would sometimes sing a few words, but that was it. Because of the traditional pop structure on top of the eurodance inspiration, Aqua is considered to do bubblegum dance-pop more than eurodance. Even though most people know Aqua for the dance tracks such as Barbie Girl, Doctor Jones, Lollipop (Candyman) and My Oh My they also made slower tracks like Turn Back Time, Good Morning Sunshine and We Belong to the Sea. These tracks do not belong to the general bubblegum pop genre. There is also a difference between the first album Aquarium and the second album Aquarius. Aquarium had many similar tracks whereas Aquarius experimented with acoustic instruments and genres like country and Latin music. At the end of the 1990s the interest for eurodance music was dropping. Aqua's second album, Aquarius, which was released in 2000, was therefore not as well timed as the first one.

The lengths of all the songs were made so they were suitable for radio play. The average length for the tracks on Aquarium is 3:43. This is also a characteristic of pop music.

Unreleased songs include Wow, Wow, Wow, Shakin' Stevens (Is A Superstar), Couch Potato, Hi-Fi Stereo, Here Comes The Birds from Grøn Koncert 2001 and Those Were The Days from Grøn Koncert 2008.