One amusing result of the Milli Vanilli “scandal”:
Well, remember the furor after nude porno shots of Vanessa Williams surfaced? How she had to give up her Miss America crown. The following year, weeks before the pageant, Penthouse publisher claimed (probably falsely, in my opinion) that he possessed nude photos of something like ten of the contestants, and was all set to pusblish them as soon as one of them was announced as the winner.
As I said, I think Guccione was lying, merely to publicize himself and his magazine But the voters DEFINITELY believed him, because that year, they gave the award to Miss Utah, who hadn’t been given any chance of winning before Guccione’s statement. It was clear that the voters believed Guccione, and were terrified they’d pick a girl he had nekkid pictures of. So, they picked a seemingly wholesome Mormon girl, reasoning that she couldn’t POSSIBLY have done anything like that!
Well, the year after Milli Vanilli won the Best New Artist Grammy award, the nominees for Best New Artist were… 4 electro-disco-dance-pop groups and singer-pianist Marc “Walking in Memphis” Cohn.
Needless to say, Cohn won… and I have NO doubt whatsoever that the only reason he won is that Grammy voters were TERRIFIED that the disco groups would turn out to be as bogus as Milli Vanilli. Cohn wasn’t very exciting, but at least everyone knew he really sang and really played the piano!
Mind you, in the pre-MTV era, there were countless hit records made by sesssion musicians and hired studio singers. The Archies weren’t a real group, everyone knew it, and nobody cared. Many disco hits of the 70s were, likewise, written and arranged by professional composers and producers, then played by session men and sung by unknown studio singers. Nobody knew who most of those 70s disco bands were, and nobody cared.
But in the MTV era, it became important to have glamorous faces to go with the music. Rob and Fab were hired to LOOK cool, not to sing or to play music. As much as I disliked the music of Milli Vanilli, I think those two guys took a little too much heat. They weren’t singers, after all- just actors hired to PLAY singers on TV.