Milli Vanilli were an R&B duo from the 80s. They were huge, they had hits like Girl You Know It's True, Girl I'm Gonna Miss You, and Blame it on the Rain. Then, it turned out that they never sang on their record! The media tore them apart and they were humiliated by the public. One of them ended up committing suicide. I never knew that their producer was the one behind Boney M, he had one of those singers lip-sync to his voice! Was anyone here around when they got busted?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zThlR_utkJw

I was around, but didn't know the whole story.

That producer really ruined their lives.

Milli Vanilli got all the blame, but the whole scam required a bunch of people working together... the real singers, the producer, who knows who else...

I can imagine being in their shoes... in a new world asking them to take part in this scam... wondering "is this part of the business"...

Later on I learned the Beach Boys didn't play on "Pet Sounds"... the music business is a strange game...

https://prince.org/msg/8/354225


Also........

Video:

Milli Vanilli: The Biggest Hoax In Music History


https://www.youtube.com/w...rDBh-tpp7s



Moving to music: non-prince

nextedition said:

I never understood why people were so hard on them. There were other groups that didnt sing on their records and sureky much more to come in the 90s.

And people weren't nearly as hard on people like C+C Music Factory, etc using Martha Wash's voice (when she was often told she was recording a demo or a guide vocal), then using some model in the video. Wash went thru hell to get credit and get paid. But people still balk at Rob & Fab. Black Box was sued by Wash and the late Loletta Ho

Go back further, and David Cole from C+C gave a song to the group Seduction (You're My One And Only True Love) with Martha's vocals on it (as a demo) and put Seduction in as the background. He altered her a voice a bit so it was unrecognizable (read: side step paying for her talent). It was a huge hit, and she sued. They reached an out of court settlement.

Cole pulled the same shit again with C+C.

Remember, Seduction, Black Box, and C+C were all within a year or two's time. Cole just used Wash like a fucking vocal vending machine. No one said that much about it. But everyone will drag Rob & Fab out as the proverbial whipping boys.

Even Sheryl Crow says she sang on a lot of people's music that you'd know.

The whole Milli Vanilli "project" was just sleazy. It wasn't just that session vocalists sang on the records, it wasn't just that the instrumentals for their songs were jacked from two year old club mixes, it wasn't just that the dudes who Frank Farrian (the producer) picked to be models couldn't speak English and were just general fuckups, it was everything.

Their undoing was when Farrian submitted the album to the Grammys and they won Best New Artist. People had whispered about all the weird inconsistancies and the fact they couldn't speak English well before, but when they won the Grammy it was just patently clear that it was all a fraud. I remember In Living Color were trashing them every night.

Fab Morvan did a really great interview with DJ Vlad on YouTube a few years ago - I really reccomend checking it out, it's long, but it's pretty much the definitive history of Milli Vanilli.

https://www.youtube.com/w...qmO9VE0PuY

This makes me smile!

>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogX8s2HsO2A

And we can't forget Technotroic using model Felly Kilingi as the face of the group and lip-synching to Ya Kid K's vocal for the Pump Up The Jam album.

There was a lot of that going on in this time period. And yes, Rob and Fab took all the blame. And We can't forget about Arista and Clive Davis, who to this day claims he had no idea Rob & Fab weren't really singing.

StrfishNcoffee03 said:

That time period had a lot of this, I compare it too the steroid era in baseball, mainly the Barry Bonds Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa times, everyone knew what was going on and turned the other way then let the guys take the bullets. Clive Davis knew about Milli Vanilli and looked the other way, also the guy that put together Milli already used this whole scam with Boney M years before. It was making millions and that was all that the labels cared about, I mean labels don't care if their artists are criminals why would they care if they actually are singing.

Yes, blame it on the rain.

Back then the song Girl You Know It´s True had already been released by a short-lived group called Numarx on a very obscure dance music label called ZYX Music.

It wasn´t a big success but Frank Farian liked the song and released a cover version with Milli Vanilli, or rather the session musicians, and that´s when it became a huge hit .

One of the Numarx members was later involved with Def Jam Records.

[Edited 4/14/20 18:35pm]

alphastreet said:

I agree that they knew what they were doing, I can feel empathy for the backlash but no sympathy for their experiences of it. This dodgy stuff was endemic at the time in commercial music and SOMEONE had to pay the piper for the lies, fraudulent behavior and general frontin' of this industry - and like anyone caught with their hand in the cookie jar, Milli Villainy were quick to play victim when they realised the well was drying up, so they did deserve it to some degree. And don't try to tell me otherwise because girl you know it's, girl you know it's, girl you know it's