Milli Vanilli: 20 years later
Milli (left), and Vanilli In transferring music into my iPod I came across the Girl You Know It's True CD by Milli Vanilli. Remember them?
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For those who are too young to remember what happened, Milli Vanilli was a pop/dance project started by producer Frank Farian. The group was purported to consist of Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, two good-looking guys who could dance and sing at the same time. The music was very dance-oriented and the visual performances were great.
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Girl You Know It's True was a multi-format smash, and earned Milli Vanilli the Best New Artist award at the 1990 Grammys. Here's where it gets ugly: That Grammy was revoked when it was determined that Pilatus and Morvan didn't sing a note on that record.
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Bummer.
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So I sat at my desk looking at that CD and all that it represents. Deceit. Lies. Embarassment. Death. (Pilatus killed himself in 1998)...But above and beyond all that, the album still kicks ass. The beats, the vocals, the music and the whole package was slicker than eel shit at the time and it holds up today.
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I remember in November 1990 when Frank Farian confessed, I was programming a small Top 40 station in Atlanta. We were still playing the crap out of that record, particularly the single "Blame It On The Rain," and I had to make the decision whether or not to keep playing it. Other stations dropped Milli Vanilli like a hot potato, but it took me 15 seconds to make up my mind - We would continue to play the record. My reasoning was that we weren't deceiving our audience by playing them, they were newsworthy and topical, and the music was good and people liked it.
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So they stayed on, and eventually "Blame It On The Rain" became the Milli Vanilli "gold" track in our rotation (meaning a song that might still be played years after the song was new).
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I personally had sympathy for Rob and Fab. They took the most heat while Farian crept back into the shadows of the recording studio. The media took a collective dump on those two guys, who really only did what most of us might do given a similar proposition. Think about it: If some guy said to you, "Hey, you're good looking...I have this record and I need a face for it. You don't hve to sing a note, just go out there, look cute and lip-sync...Oh and here's several million dollars for your trouble." Wouldn't you do it?
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Girl, you know it's true.
posted by Brian @ 4/04/2009
3 Comments
3 Comments:
The Partridge Family did the same what with the singers and non-singers all thrown together. And the Monkees sang but didn't actually play... or something like that.
I wouldn't like paying concert prices to see someone lip-synch live. It was tough with the M.V. thing because they were selling these guys as a singing package. Sad that the guy who actually put the deal together suffered the least.
-Vermont Neighbor
What Top 40 station was this you were programming?
I'm not sure I've ever heard the words "kick ass" and "Milli Vanilli" put together. We'll just give you a written warning this time, but if we see "Kylie Minogue" and "kick ass" together, there will be a stiff fine.
"Men at Work" and "kick ass" absolutely belong together, though.
First things first, my comment verification word was "pantaboo". I just like saying it...
Milli Vanilli, possibly one of the most band stories to come out of the 90s.
Coming out of the Reagan era and the whole "image is everything", which would later switch over to the "image is ugly" look of the mid-90s, you have to look at the entire story.
Rob and Fab went to their manager, and said, "You give us more money, or we're telling the press." And so the manager says, "Screw you, I'll tell the press."
And then someone pulled back the curtain and found a fat white guy pulling the strings for the Oz.
The Monkees and the Partridge Family are similar, but in truth don't compare. David Cassidy was a musician, as were Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith of the Monkees. And the Monkees wanted to play their own instruments, with Mickey Dolenz even learning the drums.
Rob and Fab did not. They were paid good money to look good, something that had been done for both C&C Music Factory the very same year! (Most forget this, as MV was the big story)
Mind you, people by 2000 were paying insane amounts of money to watch Britney Spears, Christina and N'Sync all lip sync their music to dance moves. Madonna herself didn't sing a note on her last two tours, but rather lipped her way through dance moves.
Video killed the radio star. Image is everything. Except with Rick Astley. If you're hot, and get too much ego, you can be shot down.
Pantaboo indeed.
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