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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Blame It on the Feign, Part 2
00:44:28
Chris Molanphy's analysis of the surprising impact of controversial act Milli Vanilli, continued.
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode, we talked about the curious history of Milli Vanilli, now regarded as pop music's biggest fraud ever. But as far back as the 70s, group creator Frank Farian was already experimenting with non singing frontmen, as in his Europop group Boney M. That disco era act didn't score any big hits in America, but Farian's 80s project, fronted by non singing frontmen Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, was scoring a string of massive US hits. The only question was whether Rob and Fab could keep the charade going. As Milli Vanilli grew ever bigger, Bristol, Connecticut looked like it was about to be Milli Vanilli's Waterloo, the moment when they very publicly went down in defeat. On July 21, 1989, at a date on the Club MTV tour in Bristol, in front of thousands of screaming fans, the backing track supplying Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan's vocals got stuck in a loop. This piece of footage is the most damning evidence in the Milli Vanilli story. It's frankly amazing in the era before camera phones or even light camcorders that this moment was captured on tape at all. As the story goes, Rob Pilatus ran offstage mortified, convinced the game was up for him and Fabrice, and he had to be coaxed back on stage by Club MTV host downtown Julie Brown.
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So with a bit of pushing and screaming, a couple of F words, I think as well, I got them back out there. And the funny thing is they got back out there and nobody cared. The audience didn't care. It was more basically people were laughing at them behind the scenes more than in front.
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It's logical that a live audience would be unfazed by this glitch at a dance music show where performers routinely play to track, even if they are not usually lip syncing even their vocals. The thing about the Bristol, Connecticut incident is it wasn't Milli Vanilli's Waterloo. The revelation of their deception and the heavy fallout wouldn't happen for more than a year. Maybe that was because as of 1989 and 1990, hit dance records with selectively hidden vocalists were becoming commonplace, particularly among acts that originated in Europe.
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I want a place to stay get your booty on The Floor Tonight Make.
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My day later, in 1989, the Belgian electrodance project Technotronic began a small streak of hits on the Hot 100 with their number two smash pump up the Jam. The full credit for the hit read Technotronic featuring Feli. That was Congolese model Feli Kalingi, who lip syncs the vocals in the video for Pump up the Jam. But the actual vocals on the track were by Ya Kid Kyle, a deliberately unglamorous rapper and singer who preferred to dress in street fashion. Technotronic didn't take long to become more truthful. By the time of their follow up hit Get up before the Night Is Over, Ya Kid K was appearing in the video, and later singles credited her as the featured artist. Somewhat more contentious was the situation with Italian house music group Black Box, an act whose very title suggested a kind of mystery about who exactly was performing. Black Box's debut single, the 1989 global hit Ride On Time, Was built out of a chopped up sample of the 1980 club hit Love Sensation by Loliotta Holloway. By the way, that's the same hit we told you about in our featured artists episode of Hit Parade, because Holloway's jam later also became the basis for Marky Mark's Good Vibrations.
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It's such a good vibration A feeling that I know so well.
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When Black Box couldn't clear the sample of Holloway singing, they hired a session vocalist, Heather Small, to simply re sing Holloway's part. But then in the video for Ride On Time, Black Box hired, yep, a model, Katrin Quinault, to lip sync the song. So a vocal that had started as Loliotta Holloway's and had been re recorded by Heather Small was performed without either of them for the cameras. Unchastened. A year later, when Black Box had their US chart breakthrough with the hit Everybody Everybody, They were still using different vocalists in the studio. And in their video, famed vocalist Martha Wash was the singer on Everybody Everybody and Quinault continued as the face of the group. Wash would end up suing the producers and the label and won a large settlement even as Black Box scored two more Top 40 hits with her invisible vocals on the tracks. The difference between Milli Vanilli and either Technotronic or Black Box was one of sales. The Milli Vanilli album and singles were chart toppers and celebrity Profile, the models employed by those other groups were used largely for music videos, whereas Rob and Fab were more than faces for Milli Vanilli. They toured, made TV appearances and gave interviews. And frankly, the Fame was going to their heads. In one infamous Time Magazine article, a hubristic Rob Pilatus told interviewer Jay Cox music Basically we're more talented than any Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney. Mick Jagger, his lines are not clear. He don't know how he should produce a sound. I'm the new modern rock and roll. I'm the new Elvis. Whatever your opinion about those prior rock legends, you have to agree Rob and Fab were asking for trouble. One other big difference between Milli Vanilli and other contemporaneous dance pop acts was bonafides of their songs. Well, one song in particular, anyway. Remember that Diane Warren track I mentioned earlier, the one she gave to Arista Records president Clive Davis, who then bequeathed it to Frank Farian? Blame it on the Rain was a song Warren had intended for family pop group the jets, who declined to record it. But the Journey woman songwriter, the author of so many hits with the uncanny ability to turn hallmark sentiments into songs, would not be deterred. And Clive Davis knew a Diane Warren song was money in the bank.
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If I could turn back time.
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If.
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I could find a way.
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Indeed, 1989 ranks as one of Warren's most successful years. Her late 1988 hit with Chicago, Look Away wound up being Billboard's number one song of 1989. In September 89, the same week, Milli Vanilli were at number one with Girl, I'm gonna miss you, another Diane Warren composition was sitting at number three, Cher's perennial if I could turn back time. Two months later, Diane Warren pulled off her biggest chart coup, two consecutive number ones on the Hot 101st, Diana. The Schlock Rock supergroup Bad English, consisting of singer John Waite fronting members of Journey, scored an immediate number one with the Warren penned power ballad when I see you smile.
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When I see you smile.
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Then, after two weeks at number one, Bad English gave way to Millie Vanilli, who had indeed recorded Blame it on the Rain. It spent its own fortnight at number one. That was four straight weeks where America's top song was written by Diane Warren. Decades later, in an interview about her songwriting career with Rolling Stone, Diane Warren said simply, quote, whoever sang that song, I love it. To be precise, the main verse vocal appears to be the work of Brad Howe, who is then joined on the chorus by John Davis, Frank Farian's other ghost vocalist. And Howe does indeed do a stellar job singing the song. Now you wish that you should have heard her and you feel like such a fool you let her walk away Blame it on the Rain is arguably the most enduring Milli Vanilli hit of all, the one you're likeliest to still hear on the radio decades later. It was the group's third consecutive number one hit and their second to go platinum after Girl youl Know It's True. Rain also pushed the Girl youl Know It's True album by January of 1990 to a stunning 6 million in US sales. Beyond these chart and sales achievements, Blame it on the Rain, more than any of Milli Vanilli's hits, gave them the stamp of industry legitimacy. Even after the whispers in the business coming out of the Bristol, Connecticut incident, the fact that the so called duo had reached the top not only multiple times, but but culminating with a song by one of the industry's most celebrated songwriters made Milli Vanilli seem legit. That sense of legitimacy might help explain what began happening in the winter of 1990.
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American Music Award and the winner is.
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What?
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Millie Vanilli.
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It started with the American Music Awards, the less prestigious of the annual music awards shows where prizes were determined by an industry Cabal. Later, the AMAs would be turned into a kind of People's Choice awards of music whoever did the voting in 1990, Milli Vanilli took home the favorite pop Rock New artist award, defeating hard rock band Living Color, What do you see? And the George Harrison fronted supergroup the Traveling Wilburies. But the AMA is not the prize for which Milli Vanilli is most famous or infamous. That was, of course, the Grammy Award. And before I try to explain how exactly Rob and Fab won the gramophone that brought about their downfall, I first need to provide a bit of background on the specific, somewhat dubious Grammy category they won Best New Artist. To this day, Best New Artist is considered one of the big four prizes at the Grammys, alongside Album, Record and Song of the Year. But it's the weirdest, most oddball category. For starters, it's the only Grammy presented not for a specific work, a song, an album, but rather to the artists themselves. It's sort of like a most promising newcomer prize, the Recording Academy, placing a bet that an act has a long career ahead of them, which then has a tendency to look foolish when they choose an act like 70s one hit wonders, the Starland Vocal Band. The members of the Starland Vocal Band themselves called their Best New Artist Grammy a curse. The kiss of death, said singer Taffy Danoff. Maybe that's also because the prize tends to go to the schlockiest, most middle of the road act in the category. Like in 1963 when the four seasons and Peter, Paul and Mary were beaten for Best New Artist by the Robert Goulet. Kiss me. Or in 1981 when Christopher Cross took the prize. I mean, hey, we here at Hit Parade love our yacht rock. But he won over the Pretenders. And Cross himself has said that Best New Artist out of all the Grammys he won that night, was a particular albatross on his career. Or in 1992 when both Boyz II Men and Seal were beaten for Best New Artist by Mark Cohn, made famous for his only top 40 hit, Walking in Memphis, Walking with my feet 10ft off a beam. Or lest we forget 2014 when a murderer's row of Kendrick Lamar, Casey Musgraves, James Blake and Ed Sheeran were all defeated by Best New Artist winners Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
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I'm gonna pop some tags only got $20 in my pocket I'm hunting looking for a come up. This is emotional.
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It's easy to pick on the Best New Artist winners whose careers fizzled out. Some legitimately great acts took that Grammy, like Carly Simon in 1972, Cyndi Lauper in 1985.
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If you're lost you can look and you will find me Time after Time.
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And Lauren Hill in 1999. But even in these cases, the award is no guarantee of career trajectory. Simon had a roughly 10 year run as a reliable hitman maker, Lauper's platinum phase lasted less than half a decade and Hill famously has never recorded a studio album follow up to her now legendary the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. So even for the greats, Best New Artist is just a strange prize, one that is trying to project forward in time rather than simply reward a musical work that already happened. This brings us back to the Best New artist competition of 1990. The fact that Milli Vanilli were in the category at all probably had something to do with the hit they had right around voting time. The Diane Warren penned Blame it on the Rain Blame it on the Rain and here were the other contenders for the prize folk rock duo the Indigo Girls.
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Unless I seek my source for some definitive closer, I am I am Gravel.
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Voiced rapper and hit maker Tone Loke. But that's what happens when body starts slapping from doing the wild vibe, British dance and R B music collective Soul to Soul. And Swedish born American raised rapper and singer Nina Cherry. Your opinions on these four acts may vary. I for one rank Cherry's Buffalo Stance among my all time favorite singles and I've long loved the Indigo Girls, whose career is still ongoing. What is inarguable is that any of the four of these acts winning Best New Artist would have been less embarrassing than Milli Vanilli winning less embarrassing for the Grammys and for Rob and Fab themselves. It should also be noted that this was the only Grammy category Milli Vanilli were up for that night. None of their hit songs nor their smash album was nominated, not even in the genre categories like popular R and B or dance.
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Like you say in French, we want to say thank you to our producer Frank Farian, to our manager Sandy Gallian, Todd Hadley, and to you.
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On the other hand, Milli Vanilli's win may have been misbegotten, but it wasn't inexplicable. Consider just in terms of sales numbers, Milli Vanilli had moved more albums by February 21, 1990 the night of the Grammys than the other four acts combined. Cherry's album Raw Like Sushi and the Indigo Girl's self titled major label debut were to that point. Both Gold Soul to Soul's Keep On Movin was platinum by Grammy night and Tone Loke's chart topping Loaked After Dark was double platinum. That's roughly 4 million albums total to Milli Vanilli's 6 million plus. Milli Vanilli had generated three number ones and a number two on the Hot 100. The other four acts had no. 1 hits among them. Cherry Loke and Soul to Soul had a couple of hits apiece, most of them top tens. Mind you, this isn't much of a defense of Grammy voters rationale for bestowing the prize as they did. Best New Artist is supposed to be forward looking, not backward, and the Recording Academy claims its prizes are bestowed not for sales but for artistic merit. But this sales and charts comparison does explain the momentum Rob and Fab had going into the night. Milli Vanilli's album was packed with hits that had kept radio and retail afloat for more than a year. Indeed, Milli Vanilli were not even done scoring hits the same week they won the Grammy. One more hit from Girl youl Know It's True reached its peak all or Nothing. The title track from the original European version of the of the album, which had also made the American album. It reached number four on the Hot 100. But even this last hit was not an unqualified victory. Later in 1990, Canadian singer songwriter David Clayton Thomas, lead singer of late 60s hitmakers Blood, Sweat and Tears, realized that all or nothing bore more than a passing resemblance to BST's 1969 number two hit spinning wheel, as in the chorus melody of both songs was identical note for note. What goes up must come down Spinning wheel Got to go round Talking about your troubles It's a crying sin Ride a painted pony Let the spinning wheel spin so Clayton Thomas would sue Frank Farian over the copyright violation. The matter was settled, with Clayton Thomas belatedly paid for the infringement. Still, the success of All Or Nothing kept Milli Vanilli's hit making streak intact. It would be the last single issued from Girl youl Know It's True, which had spent seven weeks at number one on the album chart between 1989 and 1990. Actually, all or Nothing would also be the final Milli Vanilli single period, as it turned out. And again, all five of these hits had reached the US Top five. For my fellow chart geeks out there, this is an exceptional hit making ratio for an act to issue only five songs ever in a career and have all five reach the top five is some kind of record. As we discussed in our One Hit Wonders episode, there have been plenty of acts with just a single top 10, top five or number one hit who never release anything again. There are also a small number of acts who released only two charting singles total and saw both of them reach the top 10 like Ugly Kid Joe or the top five like Jesus Jones. But five singles, each of them a top five hit. If you will allow me a creative metaphor, this makes Milli Vanilli the John Cazale of pop acts. Cazale, whose acting career was cut short when he tragically died of cancer at age 42 in 1978, had only ever acted in five feature films total, and all five were Best Picture Oscar nominees. Seriously, look it up. Milli Vanilli had a similarly abnormally short career and an unusually consistent chart streak. So at the risk of insulting a great actor whose work was far, far better than a Milli Vanilli record, the German pop act and the Italian American actor had a similarly perfect batting average.
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I'm your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over the way pop wanted it. It ain't the way I wanted it. I can handle things. I'm smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb. I'm smart and I want respect.
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As it turned out, Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan were not much smarter than Fredo Corleone, and like him, their career was about to be snuffed out. Over the summer of 1990, Frank Farian stalled for time by releasing a US remix album with the creative title Milli Vanilli the Remix Album. It contained marginally different versions of all five of their American hits, plus tracks from the original European Milli Vanilli album that hadn't made the cut for the American lp. Songs like Boy in the Tree. As critic Jimmy Guterman would later write in his book the Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time, imagine, if you can, the existence of songs not good enough to make it onto a Milli Vanilli record, unquote. But behind the scenes, a struggle was taking place. Rob and Fab were finally pushing back. They were telling Farian they couldn't keep up the ruse and more important, that they wanted to actually sing on the next Milli Vanilli album. At various times between 1989 and 1990, Rob, Fab and even the group's studio rapper Charles Shaw, had all threatened to blow the lid off the scheme. Shaw even gave an interview in which he claimed he was the actual vocalist behind the group. But then, under pressure from Farian, rescinded his comments. Finally, In November of 1990, Farian himself had had enough and he decided he would unmask Milli Vanilli before anyone else could do so. In a statement to the press, Farian revealed, quote, the record company never knew. I never told them anything. Later on, after the record was out, there were some people who raised some questions. Things moved quickly after Farian's revelation. Within days, Michael Green, the president of the Recording Academy, declared the Best New Artist Grammy would be taken back.
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We are taking it to our Awards and Nomination subcommittee and they may choose to give the Grammy to the second runner up. They may choose to give the Grammy to no. 1 this year. They just may say Best New Artist. No Grammy given.
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As it turned out, the latter was what the Grammy committee chose, vacating the prize entirely for 1990 and not awarding it to anyone among Nina, Cherry, Indigo Girls, Tone Loke or Soul to Soul. We'll never know who that runner up was. Less than a week after Farian's revelation on November 20, 1990, Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, accompanied by a lawyer, held a press conference that was a feeding frenzy of reporters and photographers. Even MTV's unflappable newscaster Kurt Loder, was taken aback.
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Milli Vanilli did demonstrate a lot of guts in showing up at a press conference in Los Angeles last Tuesday to confront a room full of reporters who were definitely out for blood.
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We ended it. Robin Sprout ended mc, not Frank Barron. We told him, if we can't sing on our record, you have to go on the press and say that we don't sing because we couldn't break out of our contract. So we had to pressurize them. We finished this game. Brad Howell and Shaun Davis are the real singers and I think they should get this Grammy. So we give this Grammy back now.
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There were repercussions for everyone involved in the scandal. Arista Records wound up settling a class action lawsuit among buyers of the Milli Vanilli album. Interestingly, only the liner notes of the American edition of the album, not the European all or Nothing, listed Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan as vocalists, which made Arista liable. An estimated 10 million buyers of Milli Vanilli albums and singles in the United States were eligible to claim a refund of a few dollars for their purchase by 1992. Reportedly, not many took advantage of the offer. For the performers behind Milli Vanilli, the people who really sang the songs, the revelation was a chance to at last put themselves in the spotlight. They recorded what would have been the second Milli Vanilli album with Frank Farian producing, and in 1991 they released the CD under the group name the Real Milli Vanilli and the album title, the Moment of Truth. The video for Keep on Running featured singers Brad Howell and John Davis on camera for the first time. The album was only issued in a few countries, all outside of the US and it only charted in Germany. The Real Milli Vanilli soon disbanded. And what about Rob and Fab? They wanted to prove they could really sing. They moved to la, recorded an album called Rob and Fab, many of whose songs were co written by Fabrice Morvan, and they released it in 1993 only in America on the very small Joss Entertainment label. They promoted it by appearing on the Arsenio hall show and even shot a video for the single We Can Get It On. Reportedly, the Rob and Fab album only sold 2000 copies total, even worse than the Real Milli Vanillis album. If Frank Farian was craven, he was ultimately correct. The combination of his ear for pop hooks, Rob and Fab's stage presence and the studio musicians chops were what made Milli Vanilli a success. The whole was far greater than the sum of its parts. The rise and fall of Milli Vanilli was remarkably swift. Barely two years boom to bust. But the Milli Vanilli approach, that rap informed dance pop style that proved far more enduring. A lot of Chart topping music in the early 90s sounded like hipper permutations of Milli Vanilli.
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Everybody dance now pause, take a breath.
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And go for yours on my command now hit the dance floor is gonna make you sweat till you bleed as that open up in DC Music Factory, the American multi platinum dance collective combined pop house hooks and prominent rapping. They even got into their own hot water by having a model lip sync to vocals by Martha Wash. Or how about these guys who, like Frank Farian, originated in Germany? Snap scored a pair of enormous pop hits with the Power and Rhythm Is a Dancer, both prominently featuring rapping from American vocalist Turbo B. Snap's beats were harder than Milli Vanilli's and Turbo B's rapping more robust. But the overall approach was the same. Or a couple of years later, yet another Germany based act, The real McCoy, a Berlin based Euro dance group whose debut album and single, both titled Another Night, went platinum in America in 1994. And they offered yet another catchy permutation of the Frank Farian formula. And by the way, these are just the dance pop acts. What did Milli Vanilli do to actual hip hop? For one thing, they made the Ashley's Roach clip beat safe for pop crossover. PM Dong, whom we talked about in our 90s RA rap episode of Hit Parade, built their 1991 number one smash set adrift on Memory Bliss out of a Spandau Ballet sample. And yet again, that irresistible beat. Even among rappers who didn't borrow that beat, Milli Vanilli arguably opened top 40 radio playlists to more melodic rap like Naughty by Nature's top 10 smash Opp, a street savvy rap track that would have been a harder sell at pop radio in 1988 than it was in 1990. What about producer Frank Farian? Rather than shaming him out of the business, the music industry seemed to admire his hustle. Within a few years he was back in the top 40 with hits he'd produced for La Bouche. And their sister project leclick. Farian even anticipated pop radio's shift from hip hop back to pure pop in 1996 when he assembled a trio of Latinx boy band style American singers whom he dubbed no Mercy. Their single where do youo Go was a Top ten hit around the world, including number five in America. Virtually everything Frank Farian conceived for Milli Vanilli became more commonplace on the charts in the decades to come. Pop acts with deliberately phony front persons. Damon Albarn of Blur created one of those in the early aughts with Gorillaz, an act fronted in all the videos by comic book style animated characters. Or acts that use backing tracks and get caught lip syncing in a live setting. Ask Ashlee Simpson how that worked out for her on Saturday night live in 2004. Fan even institutionalized the sub genre of hip hop, now commonly called the club rapper. Acts that do rap but are aiming more for the dance floor than the street kingpin. Club rappers of the 21st century have included Flo Rida, The black eyed peas. And lmfao. I'm Sexy and I Know it. Like Jim Steinman before him, Frank Farian's array of pop hits eventually made it to the stage. A jukebox musical called Daddy the Musical made its debut in London's West End in 2006, featuring mostly songs from Farian's Boney Municipal Years, but also several hits made famous by Milli Vanilli. The show wound up touring Europe for years, and Milli Vanilli hits like Baby Don't Forget My Number were translated into several languages, languages including German and Dutch. As for the front men of Milli Vanilli, the epilogue to their moment commanding the zeitgeist was far more poignant. After the failure of the Rob and Fab album, Rob Pilatus spent the rest of the 90s in and out of rehab. The boom and bust cycle of fame deeply emotionally affected him in the early 90s. He even attempted suicide. Around 1997, Frank Farian, guilt ridden over Rob's condition, bailed Pilatus out of jail after an attempted robbery, and he even began working with Rob and father Fab again for a potential Milli Vanilli comeback. But the potential comeback was short lived. On April 2, 1998, Pilatus was found dead in a hotel room in Frankfurt, the victim of an overdose of prescription drugs and alcohol. And what about Fabrice Morvan? The surviving half of the Milli Vanilli duo may not have been a good enough musician to sing on his smash 1989 album or make the Rob and Fab album a hit in 1993. But he stuck to his music and eventually in 2003, he released a fairly well received solo album called Love Revolution. A decade and a half later, Belgian house music DJ Jerry Ropero invited Morvan to do the vocals on his European club hit Celebrate. Perhaps the most touching moment for Fabrice Morvan in the last decade occurred on a German Talk show. In 2015, Fab was invited onto TV host Carmen Nabel's program to sing alongside John Davis, one of the two singers who recorded all of Milli Vanilli's music back in the day. Fab's vocal skills in the intervening 25 years had improved considerably, and he and Davis performed a live medley of Milli Vanilli hits. The German crowd sang along. Many of them appeared to know every word. And for those few minutes, as Fab and the man whose vocals he lip synced to all those years ago sang together for real, well, you know it was true. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Asha Saludja. Asha is also my producer for our monthly Hip Parade the Bridge episodes, which are available exclusively to Slate plus members. In our latest Bridge episode, I talked to pop and hip hop scholar Amy Coddington about the role pop act Milli Vanilli played in bringing rap into the mainstream. To sign up for Slate plus and hear that show and all our shows the day they're released, visit slate.com hipparadeplus June Thomas is the senior Managing producer and Gabriel Roth the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanvi.