On Paramount plus (in UK)....

Hope its a serious documentary. Clive Davis defo knew they wern't on the records LOL

About time for a proper doc on these guys. I look forward to watching it later...

I love your passion about everything but u are so dismissive over everything u don't like LOL

But fair enough

I don't think there is much to go over after the classic "Behind the music" way back when and Iam sure I will be dissapointed tbh.

Its so funny what people accept and don't accept after the fact. Like a BAND will bitch about a ballad being their biggest hit decades later but had no problem making the money when the thing was all over radio. I apply this here because there were tons that knew what was going on here, and to be honest if they did not, that further shows the behavior of "NOT KNOWING WHO YOU SIGN" and its origins. It's not a shock that tons of artists were getting signed on their "looks" as the MTV era was rising fast, once that crashed now you had all these "singing" and "talent" shows, factoring in now what is enhancing voices, AI has been a part of music for awhile now, its called auto tune and pro tools, so these two knew the deal as they have always said, but many higher ups also knew and threw them under the bus.

Not sure what's left to cover after the Behind The Music.

*

To this day, don't let me hear "Girl You Know It's True". That'll forever be one of my top 80s jams!!! In fact, I'm still down with all of their singles despite the controversy and history- those were some good tunes...

I gotta watch this somehow

Their discography of one album is so complicated. Is touched on briefly in doc.

I (from the UK), had a weird hybrid of the original European album ("All or nothing") and the Arista version with the newly added tracks. What was good about my ancient CD was it pretty much got both the left behind tracks of "All or nothing" and the newer US Arista version. Was called "2x2" and had the same track twice of one of the songs LOL and a remix only "Blame it on the rain". Took me years to find the album version of that track LOL.

Now more recently a greatest hits was released so all moot now.

Oh and the 12 mixes of their singles were often good fun.

Their second album woulda been a hit in US as "Keep on runnin'" is strong. Picked up "The Real Milli Vanilli" (i.e the second album) many years ago on cassette. "Tell me where it hurts" is one of their best songs too and woulda smashed in USA also. Rest of the album is so poor though. Like really, really rushed and bad. I bet Arista woulda beefed it up for the US release but alas it never happened as the scandal etc...reminds me of how NKOTB "Step by Step" album had a few strong singles and rest was pretty shocking.

Milli Vanilli's first album, all the congifurations, is still really strong production wise and holds up surprisenly well. "Boy in the tree" is still my cut LOL...with a title like that, no wonder Arista wanted to drop a few of the European tracks haha

Oh and I had no idea Farian never credited the vocalists Rob and Fab on the original albuim "All or nothing". Very sly....

And their press conferance after the scandal is brutal as hell. Hard to believe how seriously USA took this group. Frank Farian (who sealed their fate sadly), could not see the big deal. I can't either tbh. Was fun pop. Shame they got arrogent as hell but the fall out was just crazy as we know.

Documentary should of mentioned how Farian was already known in Europe and UK for Boney M, another group with ghost vocalists....wasn't mentioned enough. Farian did a really good funky pop album around 1990 called Q "NRG"...strange producer who was literally so hit and miss:

Q" Dont pull me down" - YouTube

[Edited 10/25/23 16:57pm]

It's worth mentioning that the fall out was purely because of them winning the Grammy. The doc rightly states that if they wern't nominated, they coulda probably gone on with just the open secret continuing.

I've been looking forward to this.

"Blame it on the rain" is one of Diane Warrens best. I think she knows it too as she is on the documentary and has talked about the song before.

I read somewhere that The Jets turned it down....shame as its a great pop song with good verses and that tiny bridge "gotta blame it on something"....

thesexofit said:

"Blame it on the rain" is one of Diane Warrens best. I think she knows it too as she is on the documentary and has talked about the song before.

I read somewhere that The Jets turned it down....shame as its a great pop song with good verses and that tiny bridge "gotta blame it on something"....

It would've been a great song for The Jets, actually. Dare I say someone like Johnny Gill or Taylor Dayne couldn't nailed it. Imagine that really Ric Wake production that Dayne had on "Blame It On The Rain." Open, reverby, big vocals.

TrivialPursuit said:

thesexofit said:

"Blame it on the rain" is one of Diane Warrens best. I think she knows it too as she is on the documentary and has talked about the song before.

I read somewhere that The Jets turned it down....shame as its a great pop song with good verses and that tiny bridge "gotta blame it on something"....

It would've been a great song for The Jets, actually. Dare I say someone like Johnny Gill or Taylor Dayne couldn't nailed it. Imagine that really Ric Wake production that Dayne had on "Blame It On The Rain." Open, reverby, big vocals.

They did do a few of her compositions. Just chose thee wrong one LOL. By my reckoning, the track, if recorded, woulda been on their bomb album "Believe", an album very underwhelming in general. Same producers mainly as before, but the songs and production are slight outside of a few cuts.

Aaaanyway, that key change in the verse is sweet too. Warren wrote sooo much stuff it's easy to forget she has done some genuinely great pop songs. Cheesy yes, but so is Wham! and they got re-evaluated LOL

Well, I watched the documentary moments ago.

The whole thing added some new light to the story we all know. And I'm kinda glad they downplayed the vocal hiccup on the Connecticut concert. Because that was just a symptom of what was going on, not the tell-all moment. Ingrid may still see things through her own filter, but it was good to hear from her anyway.

Rob really went down a deep, dark hole that he was never able to crawl from, and that was the true tragedy. One guy said, "no real crime has been committed here." And he was right. If there wasn't a video or wasn't MTV, we'd have not known for a very, very long time.

I'm casually aware of Boney M., but to learn more about how even they were a lip sync act was and wasn't surprising considering who was involved.

At the end, when they talk about Rob dying, then you segue into Fab singing "Blame It On The Rain" at a show in more recent months... why did I burst out in tears? It felt like a redemption story of sorts. It was. Rob & Fab wasn't innocent, but did they concoct this whole thing, and push the threats of "don't talk or else?" Hell no. Even the real voices were manipulated.

I'm a bit surprised they only showed Arsenio busting on them. Because as Rob & Fab, they came back on his show, sang live, and he said, "You can sing. Why didn't you sing in the first place?" meaning they could hold their own given a chance. So that was surprising to not see that. Also the archive footage of Rob (with short blond hair) wasn't used either. (I think that may have been VH1's Behind The Music.) The Connecticut show was from a different angle and sound feed as well. So maybe MTV wanted to pivot from that older footage for this new take on things.

In general, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It feels too little too late, but to know the truth... it's never too late.

TrivialPursuit said:

At the end, when they talk about Rob dying, then you segue into Fab singing "Blame It On The Rain" at a show in more recent months... why did I burst out in tears? It felt like a redemption story of sorts. It was. Rob & Fab wasn't innocent, but did they concoct this whole thing, and push the threats of "don't talk or else?" Hell no. Even the real voices were manipulated.

The irony is; that performance is either lipsynced or has vocal overdubs.

He can sing though. No doubt.

PS I should add - I wondered about the warning at the beginning, having sensitive scenes or something. I thought - well, what could those be??

Then you get to the European record exec who just casually refers to them as "colored."