Songoftheday 2/10/21 - Run like the wind fly with me to bounty land, bite me I'm yours if you're hungry please understand...
"Lollipop (Candyman)" - Aqua
from the album Aquarium (1997)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from the Danish electro-pop band Aqua, who planted themselves in the U.S. top ten with their comical single "Barbie Girl" in the fall of 1997. Their American follow-up was the track "Lollipop (Candyman)", which wasn't even put out as a single in their native Denmark. Written by the band's Rene Dif, Lene Nystrom, Soren Rasted, and Claus Norreen, along with producers Peter Hartmann and Jan Langhoff, the track continues there cute and quirky simplistic as well as manic lyrics, as Rene and Lene trade off diabetic love placades over a production that's more firmly in the Eurodance minor-chord frenetics than "Barbie Girl"...
"Lollipop" became Aqua's second (and so far last) top-40 pop hit in America in January of 1998. Internationally, the single peaked in the top ten in Australia (#3) and Sweden (#10), and made the top 40 in New Zealand (#22), Italy (#24), France (#29), and Canada (#38).
In Denmark and most of Europe, the dance track "Doctor Jones" was released as the next single, where it was almost as huge as "Barbie Girl", going to #1 in the UK, Australia, Italy, and Ireland, and top ten in Sweden (#2), New Zealand (#2), the Netherlands (#3), Belgium (#3F/#5W), Spain (#6), Finland (#6), Germany (#7), and their native Denmark (#8). That was followed by an atypical downtempo offering, "Turn Back Time", which was promoted to radio in America without being released as a single, and climbed to #49 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 Airplay chart. It topped the singles chart in the UK and made the top ten in New Zealand (#2), Hungary (#2), Sweden (#4), Ireland (#4), and Australia (#10). Finally, the song "Good Morning Sunshine" scored a fifth top-40 hit in Britain at #18.
Aqua returned in 2000 with their sophomore effort, Aquarius. The lead single, "Cartoon Heroes", was an attempt to evolve from the puerile magic of "Barbie Girl", albeit without the copyright lawsuits. It was virtually ignored in America, but was a decent international hit again, topping the charts in Spain, Italy, Norway, and Denmark, and going top ten in the UK, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, and Sweden. A second single, "Around The World", became their last British top-40 hit at #26. Even without any radio support, however, the Aquarius album sold enough to get into the top half of the Billboard 200 album sales chart in the U.S. at #82.
After a break (which saw the band win their lawsuit brought on to them by Mattel for "Barbie Girl"), the band released a Greatest Hits set with a few new songs on it. One of them, the appropriately-titled "Back To The 80's", topped the singles chart in their homeland as well as peaking at #3 in neighboring Norway in 2009. Two years later, Aqua released their third and so far most recent album, Megalomania. Lead single "How R U Doin'" made the top ten in Denmark. Since then they've toured extensively in Europe in electropop "oldies" shows, with Claus amicably departing in 2018, the year they put out a one-off single, "Rookie", a ballad that's goes way out of their wheelhouse, and sounds pretty good.
(6/10)
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and again in concert in 2009 with a more rock music style arrangement...
Up tomorrow: Queen Bee makes her debut, thrice negatively.
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