33 1/3 Author Q&A: A Closer Look at Aqua’s Aquarium

Welcome to our latest author Q&A, where we chat to the writers behind new and upcoming 33 1/3 books! Today C.C. McKee talks to us about Aqua’s rapid rise to fame and why she chose to write about these Danish Eurodance icons for her 33 1/3 book.

Now, wait a minute; you’re telling me there’s something Scandinavian and queer about Aqua!?

I’ve always had a soft spot for kitsch and camp, it’s part and parcel of my own queer cultural sensibility. While Aqua was an important part of my adolescence and a cheeky giggle at the gay bars of my early adulthood, the idea to dive into Aqua’s Aquarium came in the depths of quarantine during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eurodance was an exaggerated and effusively happy way to dull the uncertainty of the virus and challenges of isolation. Specifically Danish Eurodance took on a centrality in my listening during this period because of an unexpected confluence with another realm of my research into the art history of the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands).

This is a surprisingly challenging question, because I have yet to me anyone who doesn’t have at least a passing familiarity with “Barbie Girl.” So, I answer from a different angle. I would encourage new listeners to go beyond the big hit and listen deeper to the b-sides on Aquarium (like “Didn’t I” and “Calling You”) as well as the other acts less known outside of Scandinavia, and even outside of Denmark, discussed in the book (like Ni-Ni, Tiggy, Toy Box, Cartoons, and Blå Øjne).

While I know that Aqua hit the world stage rapidly in 1997-98, I did not realize that the band essentially went from a regional act to one of the biggest groups in the globe over the course of eight to ten months. Moreover, I learned that Aqua’s style was not an isolated phenomenon. Rather, it developed out of a cadre of Danish Eurodance acts who were working in similar iterations of the genre. Both points are discussed at length throughout the book.

The role of the studio founded by Kenneth Bager on Njalsgade in Amager for so many of these Danish Eurodance artists was a particularly interesting point that was heavily abbreviated for the sake of clarity and concision in the book. In brief, this set of music studios was used by many of the producers who worked with a range of acts during the mid- to late-1990s. From the perspective of this locale, Aqua was just one among a range of artists who were making music that might appeal to adolescent listeners and clubbers alike.

Funny you should ask! This book was such a pleasure to research and write, that I’ve already started to work on a pitch for the 33 1/3 Genre series. Keeping with my affinity for the maligned and/or dismissed and bringing it together with my love of electronic music, I would like to write a history of psytrance. The book will position psytrance in a longer trajectory of esoteric electronic music that was developed by Europeans in Goa and a niche offshoot of trance as the genre went mainstream in the late-90s and early-00s..