A place for all your music questions. Any questions, DAEs, requests for song suggestions, sharing your favorite bands, etc. is welcome.
I found a song in my music library which has an empty "Artist" field.
It's titled "Ugly Girl". It's a parody of a song called Barbie Girl by Aqua.
Some sites seem to credit it to Aqua, which honestly could make sense, but I'm not sure the voices are the same. The reason that Aqua would parody their own song to such an extreme, or maybe someone else did on their behalf is because the Barbie Girl song sparked a major lawsuit between Mattel and MCA Records, where Mattel accuses Aqua of abusing their trademark. So "Ugly Girl" could have been seen by whoever created it as an effort to further smear the "Barbie" trademark (but without actually using the trademark and risking legal action).
So anyone know the artist and/or history of this parody?
Lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel,_Inc._v._MCA_Records,_Inc.
Earliest youtube recording I could find Jan 2007 (for some reason unknown he credited the song to weird al): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-al95ojob8
Lyrics : https://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/a/aqua/ugly_girl_barbie_girl_parody.html#!
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Holy shit! I can’t believe someone else has been looking for the true artist/artists behind this song! I know I’m almost a year behind on this but thank you for helping me find some closure for this!
Edit; I found an Instagram account that hopefully really belongs to a member of that band Jack Off Jill. I messaged that account, even though they haven’t posted anything in like 2 years, in the hopes of confirming it was them
Did they reply?
They never did. Sorry I haven’t gotten on Reddit in a long while and didn’t see your comment
are you guys still searching for this?
yes I would still like to know
If you ever find out, please let this thread know!
I think it was made by Adam Henderson
unfortunately I haven't seen much evidence to support that...
Also, which "Adam Henderson"? it's a surprisingly common name...
"I'm sorry, but you're too damn ugly" screw you ken
I dunno if you're still looking for it, but I can give a little insight into where the Weird Al attribution came from; It actually predates Youtube by quite some time, back in the day of file-sharing services like Napster/KaZaa/Limewire, any parody song would be labeled as being by Weird Al, even when 99% of the time he had nothing to do with them. My dad has this song on an old iPod and of course, it was attributed to Al. There was a popular webpage in the early 2000s about this subject (which has since went down but mirrors exist), and while Ugly Girl is listed, the original webmaster did not know the artist. If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably written by some "morning zoo" radio show around the late 90s/early 2000s and shared around file-sharing services, a lot of the songs on the Not Al list were originally from those types of shows.
All very true. There is also the facts "Weird Al" Yankovich NEVER used profanity. He has stated this in interviews. Nor did he ever make fun of or insult a person. The song in question, Barbie Girl Parody, does both. Thought I would share, I've been sporadically looking for the composer for about 10 years. I am beyond guessing and 99% positive on the "Radio Show" you suggested. I am thinking it was one of the John boy and Billy imitation shows that normally aired on rock stations because they generally have a little more freedom. Check out this list:
http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/notbyal.html
Whoever created that page, bought the domain name, and paid for hosting must be dedicated to correcting the "Weird Al" misinformation in the world. Unfortunately even that list reads "unknown" for the Aquas parody.
The mystery continues...
Ah, interesting. So "Weird Al" was at a time just shorthand for any parody. Hopefully someone will come across this at some point who remembers what show or artist it was really from.
This parody seems pretty detailed for just a one off morning show but who knows.
Wow! I'm currently going through a rework of all my MP3s now that I have Apple Music and this one was in my device, credited to Weird Al, and was downloaded off Napster/Limewire back in the 90s. Sadly, the Apple Music transfer seems to have wiped the song. It has the title, but song is gone. I'm currently re-adding it via an old YouTube. Still don't know who to attribute it to.
It sucks that apple does that. I get that maybe they don't have a given song on their service, for the money you pay each month, they should upload and store it for you so that you don't lose it from your collection...
Ugly Girl is a parody written by Weird Al Yankovic. He tends to parody a lot of artists and has been doing so for years now.
Most artists think it's a honour if he parodies them and some have even appeared in their own parodies of the videos he's made.
Do you have any source for that? I went around online looking into that and I didn't see it on any of his discographies.
But, I do think I stumbled upon my answer!
On the Aqua Fandom wiki, https://aqua.fandom.com/wiki/Barbie_Girl
"The band Jack Off Jill wrote a parody called, "Ugly Girl." The Aquabats and "Weird Al" Yankovic are often mistakenly credited for it. In 2000, Ben Apgar created a flash animation video for the parody on the now defunct 512Productions.com, though the song went credited to "Composer: unknown"."
So that could explain why So many people had heard of the song without knowing who it was by, it was made famous by a music video that failed to credit the artist.
Searching "Jack off jill Ugly girl" shows a bunch of people who credit the song to them. Also apparently Jack Off Jill disbanded in 2000, which if it was near to the songs creation could explain why they never published it on an album.
Unless anyone else has any more information to present. I'm going to consider this one solved
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6ok7Hl9rvA
Here's a video from 2006 that credits Jack of Jill, although can't tell if the description was edited since.
Nice find, and good to see things are aligning really well for Jack off Jill.
You're right that the description could have been edited, but given the complete lack of activity from the user since 2006, I think that makes it less likely. (for all I know Youtube might not even have added the ability to edit the description until after 2006).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IEfJTgbEmM&pp=ygUdamFjayBvZmYgamlsbCBpbSBhbiB1Z2x5IGdpcmw%3D this not them?
Yep, that's from a reunion tour they did in 2015. Based on it being such a different genre of music, it's hard to know if the voice is the same, or if it was edited, or if they had different vocals and just composed the song. Who knows
I remember downloading this song from Napster back in 1999/2000
Is it Bloom - I’m an ugly girl?
Any source for that? All i could find looking for Bloom - I’m an ugly girl? was another music video from May of 2007.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X8YEiJpI7s
I still think my comment to bloverfish above has the best supporting evidence.
Found an early upload from 2006 https://youtu.be/Gs6aKucXzlc
Thanks, but that one is about 6 months after the earlier one MartianCavenaut found above.
at least it is somewhat solved
ever successfully find the answer?
I don’t have it (but am curious).
Jack Off Jill seems to be the creators. They released it in 2000
Where did you find this out?
Somebody posted a link to the aqua wiki which has it listed
It doesn’t state it was by JOJ, says it is wrongly accredited to JOJ and has an unverified author. I would lean more towards Adam Henderson than JOJ (considering the other songs), until something is solidly confirmed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie_Girl
I am late to this, but I first heard this on a cd a friend burnt for me back in 2001.
Thanks, we are pretty sure it existed as early as 2000.
I believe that 100%. I don't know exactly how old that CD my friend had was, because at this time burning custom CDs was starting to become a thing. I wanna say I remember him singing the lyrics in the year 2000 because he loved Dr Demento and stuff and recited the stuff all the time.
I found its made by someone called Adam Henderson http://www.amiright.com/parody/90s/aqua0.shtml and the amv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-al95ojob8 is from 1999 https://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=3631 if that helps to find this idk man if this is found my fucking life will be completed lol.
if you compare the lyric sheet on amiright to the actual song it becomes pretty clear that this isn't the proper source, either. my only guess is whoever put these lyrics online felt it wasn't crass enough or something.
Oh ok thanks
Thanks, according to AMV this video was first uploaded on May 1 1999, so now at least we know the song is from the 20th century. Now as far as if it's actually by Adam Henderson, or which Adam Henderson we are even talking about, that's a question I would like to get more answers to...
hello
Not me talking to a girl on discord and referencing this song and ending up confused cause i couldnt the artist 😂😂😂