Satan’s post, Be the first in line to hate this song, about a little ditty that was recently big in Europe that will soon inundate U.S. airwaves, prompted this.
I could swear that it was common knowledge in Europe that Milli Vanilli lip-synched and that it was no big deal. “Girl You Know It’s True” had a beat you could dance to, so nobody cared.
Europeans, am I deluding myself? I haven’t lived in Germany for over ten years, but I remember being shocked that everyone was so angry about it… the Grammy scandal, etc.
Yeah, it was common knowledge. The producer actually sang all the vocals - I believe he was the same guy behind 70’s Disco sensation Boney M. - another lip-synch group.
It was somewhat of a debate when Milli Vanilli was “big”, but once they had their 15 minutes of fame (almost literally, I believe they had 3 or 4 hits) the ‘scandal’ was accepted. People shrugged and moved on - like you said, they were catchy tunes and that was all. No need for an artistic analysis.
One of the two guys died a few months/years later. Rumours were going around that he killed himself because he couldn’t live with all the false allegations that they had their producer sing everything.
Now who knows anything about the death of Milli ? Or was it Vanilli ?
There was a VH-1 Behind the Music show about them. They did admit to lip-synching, but they tried to continue Milli Vanilli with their own vocal stylings. Their real names are Rob and Fab. Rob is the one who killed himself, just a few years ago. People speculate that the reason was their failed attempt at regaining fame.
Although I didn’t know about the whole lipsynching thing at the time, I do remember that their “back-up” singers appeared on Gasthaus (remember that awful show?). When the story broke, I was like “Dude, I saw them on tv!”
In a semi-related story, do you remember Snap? They had that song “I got the Power”. The lady who sang the “I got the power” part, wound up working at the little kiosk outside our school! I felt so bad for her, apparently she only got a one-time fee and then the got dumped. I wanted to ask her how she felt about the whole thing, but I was too polite. She was very nice, always gave me extra jalapenos on my nachos.
It always surprised me that nobody knew that they didn’t really sing…I mean, if you ever heard them in an interview, they sounded nothing like the songs…very heavy accent. Now granted, some people sing in a different voice than the talk in, but I don’t think there would be nearly as much of an accent…
