Johnny Cash sings Barbi Girl

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As Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie is set to hit theaters this weekend, a cover of Aqua's 1997-hit "Barbie Girl" by the late Johnny Cash is racking up views on YouTube — except that's not Johnny Cash.

Set to the tune of "Folsom Prison Blues," the video may sound just like the famous country singer, who died in 2003, but musician Dustin Ballard told Fox Business it's actually his voice augmented by an AI voice model that's singing "I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world."

The video, which also mashes up "Wannabe" by Spice Girls and "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus with Cash's signature style, was posted to Ballard's channel, "There I Ruined It," and has racked up more than 650,000 views. Ballard says his channel — conceived "in a moment of musical boredom" during the COVID-19 pandemic — is dedicated to taking beloved songs and "lovingly" destroying them by changing the genre and melody, but keeping the lips synched to the words.

"I often try to think of the most musically inappropriate combination I can," Ballard said. "I love Johnny Cash, and the lyrics of Barbie Girl seemed about as far from his usual repertoire as I could imagine."

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