As a musician myself, I don't blame them one bit! They were broke and struggling and someone offered them a paying gig. They took it to survive. End of story.
A scandal doesn't GAF about someone's personal troubles. If that was the case, all of those scam call centers in India is fine and dandy because they are just trying to survive. Those poor musicians who ACTUALLY DID THE WORK got the shaft and that's OK in your book ?!?!? You'd ''sing'' a different tune if you did all the work and got NO CREDIT !!!! I'm glad those goofballs got exposed and shamed. Has nothing to do with them being ''nice'' or not.
NO they chose to be a part of something that was dihonest, so they put them selves in a position, used would only apply if they had no Idea -and of course they did since they just lip singing the songs@@unclehollywoodshouseofther995
@@richgraham4416 how can you say they weren't the ones deceiving when they signed up for the gig they knew what it was about they knew what they were lip-syncing they knew they weren't really singing the song and they waent a long with the charade so they have accountability of course don't think they don't
@@1p4p_akqb99 um back in the 90s these guys became one the the most popular groups. Even one a Grammy. Everything was great for them until they were preforming live and the vocal track they had been using skipped and exposed them as not actually singing. They were basically recruited because they were good looking. They weren’t given a chance to sing- they didn’t even speak English. They became the biggest joke across all media. Everyone was making fun of them for lip syncing. They had their Grammys returned and I seem to remember there were lawsuits. They tried ti learn English and redeem themselves but the damage was largely done. Rob killed him self. Fab still preforms and is actually a good singer.
@@1p4p_akqb99 It's much safer for you and your loved ones if you remain oblivious to who these men are. Just know there are people watch, always watching... Just like Roz from Monsters INC.
There's literally a video of the guy singing it live with acoustic guitar players. He can sing well---certainly better than the fake singers using autotune today.
Very true… AND he sings live! Definitely better than JLo 😂 Check it out… ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ogX8s2HsO2A.htmlsi=k3HIKRmThZAbQJ84
@@Music-tg5isthey probably would had have the same success if they sang it for real. The songs are still catchy. The whole thing this was about was the apperance and image. So even if the singing would not be that good, people are still superficial and go for looks. That fans destroyed thier records only proofs this, they didnt really care about the music
@@spiritloa I agree in some way. Yes I believe if the original singers had sung this song it is hard to imagine that they would have become stars. But I also have a lot of doubts that if Rob and Fab had sung with their real voices that this would have worked.
I will never understand why the producers didn't just bring in vocal coaches and let them sing the songs on the album. There are plenty of pop stars who don't have the greatest voices, but still made a success out of it.
@@maryhansen7021 So? They could still make bad singers sound good back then. These guys had better singing voices than, say, Paula Abdul. And she was able to sell millions.
@@hutch1197Paula’s singing is ROUGH now. You can tell she hasn’t kept up with it. Saw her in concert a few years back and was EXTREMELY disappointed. Debbie Gibson also. Live I was very disappointed.
The music industry owes milli vanilli a public apology. They took their award for ‘lip syncing’ and now that same music industry hands out awards FOR lip syncing.
The lip syncing wasn’t the issue. It’s that they themselves never sang it even in the recording studio. It’s akin to Gorillaz or The Archies except these were real people instead of cartoon bands
Ive come back to this video and have to say Fab actually can sing quite well. He still makes original music to this day and also actually sings the classic Milli Vanilli songs. Look up Fab Morvan.
I do feel bad about this story, and especially for Rob that died of an overdose... Yes, back in the 90's, no one knew what was going on behind the scenes with the group, so we just liked their music... Hearing these songs today brings back good memories, so that stunt wasn't such a bad thing as far as I'm concerned... Just the death of Rob is bad.
I agree, actually they didn't sound bad as singers, I found them passable or credible imo. They just had accents, but I'm from New Orleans and english is my natural language, but everyone I meet that's not from louisiana tells me I speak with an accent, so, it's funny to me.😆
I’m American and it would have been great to have a band come out singing in their own voices with their accents why would someone wanna take their accents away back then everyone sounded the same very sad very unfortunate. Very heartbreaking.🙏🏾😔
They were incredibly handsome, athletic and had awesome stage presence that captured audiences of all ages. They deserve praise for having the talent and personality of true performers. They just happened to not be singers. It’s sad they themselves took the fall when it was a well choreographed machine by many powerful music execs.
Agree! After all, they are still one of my favorites. People don’t realize they weren’t the only ones, the Black Box singer for example, the lady on the video is a French model lip syncing and nobody said nothing at the time
@jmurdock8303 Their manger, who " exposed " them did this with all the groups he managed. They wanted to sing on their records but their manger wouldn't let them. The manager went to the press when he got word they were about to do the same , so it made him look like the innocent in all this because he got there first.
This breaks my heart, poor guys. They seemed so sweet and willing to learn. The producer is to blame but the guys are the ones who took the biggest reputation hit. 😢
The problem wasn't that they couldn't sing, it was that they couldn't speak English well. Fab over came it & has an amazing voice. Rob was improving but drugs got in his way everytime he was on the right track. If people were smarter & more forgiving, maybe he'd still be here. I don't hold Rob responsible for his drug use & death. He lost everything & the world turned on him & fab. They were hated for something that wasn't their fault, something that they were forced to do inorder to avoid tons of trouble. Wish people would look into their story & what happened before making judging them. RIP Rob
I feel bad for them. They wanted to sing themselves yet their producer wouldn’t let them and when they insisted on singing themselves, their producer exposed them for lip syncing as a way to get back at them. Rest In Heavenly Peace Rob🙏🤍🕊🙏♥️
The biggest question I always had was whether the infamous concert tape malfunction was really an accident. They were in the midst of a contract battle with their producer when this happened
I always felt they leaked it. The main producer knew they would get blamed only. Everyone was deceptive but they were scapegoats. It was sad then and now. I always felt bad for the men who were so young too.
They sang like original singers at the end so who cares about that scandal. It's not their fault, they were manipulated. Girl you know it's true is my favourite song and will always be ❤
I love these guys!! Their energy is everything! My heart is with Rob. You had to live a long life, sweet angel. People destroyed them, it's awful it's not fair. They were real stars. You are always in my heart boys, I don't care who was singing. I love YOU ❤🎉🎉🎉
The scary thing is.. it still goes on to this day in varying levels. For some, it’s 2 other singers singing parts of the song that the “star” can’t sing or they heavily mix the stars voice in with the other singers then you have super famous singers out here that are not singing on their own albums at all. Madness. This story is really sad though. Don’t understand why the entire blame was put on these two guys. 😮
Because they were the face of Milli Vanilli. This was not their fault,. they were used for their looks and stage presence and it was the record company and producers who actually did the deception.
in Europe was a common thing to have models lip sync songs but the problem was because they were really gorgeous men, and in the US teenagers got crazy about them, and the songs were hits
I just found their cassette at a resale store for 25 cents!! I totally bought it! Along with Rick Springfield and Martika! 😂 ❤ I grew up with this music, I was heartbroken when I found out it wasn’t them singing. Idgaf now.
@@ericacruz8261 they were young, naive and offered the chance to make a lot of money for themselves. We’re they forced? No, however they were taken advantage of.
This is to the person that made this video. Some artists today just perform on stage and lip sync their songs but they actually recorded their songs with their voices in a studio. Milli Vanilli never sang their songs, it wasn’t their voices to begin with. Big difference.
Not a fan *but* I saw Fab, the surviving member do a very good live vocal performance from a concert or festival stage on RU-vid and the guy owned it. I have nothing but respect for that guy after I saw him really do that shii 💪💪
I just stumbled on a video of him doing that today, his voice is actually incredible. It has a touch of some of the classic soul singers like Otis Redding. I would listen to a whole album of him.
I saw them in concert in the 80s.. I loved their music. I don't even care that someone else sung it.. I liked their persona and stage presence! So sad that Rob took his own life over the scandal.. I still love their music to this day.. Even had their album.
@@sunnerfisk That is so disingenuous. He was so messed up over the scandal that he sunk into addiction and overdosed. You can't pretend the scandal had nothing to do with his death, intentional overdose or not. It's not like a piano fell on him or something.
That’s your opinion I believe that they really could sing and their accents made it more unique they have great singing voices and was never given a fair chance. It was disgusting what they did to them. Why would anyone try to take their accent away? It is a part of them. I’m American and who wants to hear somebody sound the same all the time when they could have been singing. I would have appreciated to have them record and sing in their own voices. 💯 and they were forced not to and they wanted to. And they wanted to from the beginning they did.💯
This was the first CD that our family bought back in 1989. I was in the 2nd grade at the time. It is still great music to this day. I felt really bad for them when this happened. It was their manager’s fault. Milli Vanilli forever!!
Turns out they could sing. Also, that MTV Performance was NOT the performance that outed them. In fact, nothing happened after that or any performance. Their Producer, Frank Farian outed them.
Those guys were still stars to me, they had the looks and could dance and all. Who cares about the lip syncing stuff, most real music artists lip sync today.😆
Frank Farian really threw the two of them under the bus. He announced it to the world in a press conference, without even letting them know ahead of time!
unfortunately Frank Farian committed this shameful act of treason. I grew up in the town next to Braunfels where this individual resided and went to the same school as his son. There are a lot of corrupt people running the music industry and Farian seems to have been one of those, very unfortunate. Hope his son didn't follow suit of this garbage example.
Dang. Much of history is a lie. I´ve sort of given up on hoping to living to see the day it comes to light. This MV lie isn´t really all that big. Much bigger is the Stevie Wonder blindness lie but it doesn´t seem to matter. Certain lies just don´t seem to matter but the MV one is I suppose so easy to comprehend that the masses have taken it on.
Yeah...and sadly, there's this long list of "composers" for each song, as if it somehow took a large committee of people. If you can read and write music, you don't need all these people.
It´s nice to see that Fab made it back on the stage to sing Milli Vanilli Songs alone. He has a channel here on youtube. It´s so sad that it broke Rob and he never found a way back to life and died without the knowledge that this wound will heal one day. What I found a bit mysterios is that they didn´t learn their songs before (me as an 9 yo. fan knew every word and every move as my jazzdance-teacher always told me: you need to understand what you are dancing), but i think maybe there were some contracts we don´t know (f.e. they were not allowed to practise on their own). Really looking forward to the movie next year, maybe I will find my answers why this went so horrible wrong. Even Farian should have known that technique often had issues and even Bobby Farrell from Boney M. was singing live when it was a live-gig.
I couldn't care less about that playback sh**. I love this song and like the guy says, everybody has been doing playback since. Only a handful of singers can really sing.
I still love Milli Vanilli. And that will never change. I also love both that they proved ,after starting studing music and singing , the world, hey we can sing too and we want this . RIP Rob i love you forever
I think they should publicly give back the Grammy's to Fab. They did onstage, exactly what they were supposed to do...perform. They weren't fake...the record execs were.
Sorry, but no. Grammy Awards are AWARDED for performance of music, or for writing music - not just given away out of pity. Rob and Fab modeled and danced and mimed. Not one single note of music was sung/performed by them on the album or live, because the slimeball Farian would not let them.
Their producer/creator Frankie Farian did the same thing with Boney M. and No Mercy that had plenty of big hits in Europe where such things were quite common.
They were ahead of their time. Nowadays I see a lot performers performing to a recording without even lip syncing & only doing live adlibs like “yeahs, what’s & skirt skirts”
Frank Farian and the team at BMG at the time are the one who should be blamed and criticized. Almost nobody talks about the fact that Frank was also the real voice of Boney M. they got away with it during that time, and got caught with the Milli Vanilli project. Fast forward to today, Fab does many gigs and sings live all the time and he’s GREAT! Redemption at best. Also one note: Fab’s accent is a french one, not a german one.
My first concert, headlining was Whitney Houston… opening act was Young MC! With the middle act being Milli Vanilli… it was my sisters birthday present from my parents so we were 4 rows back.. man could they dance!!! I was like, 11 years old, maybe?
God Lord you had a lot on your hands with this project. the syntax, the inflection, it was completely polar opposites from what was recorded to what was coming out of their mouths (or in Will Smitheez, "Ouchamouf")
It was not that Morvan and Pilatus had culpability, but that they shouldered the entire scandal alone. “Do they deserve to be called out on some level? Sure. But what about everybody else?” Farian, Arista, their record executives and their management emerged largely unscathed....
Absolutely. Especially given that they were all much older and experienced in life. Rob and Fab were in their very early 20s. They really took the brunt of it.
The BEST most amazing moment was at a show Fab did in recent years there was an opening instrumental track to start the show and spliced into it was a snipped of The Red Hot Chili Peppers.....I fell over laughing at this because it was shortly after the Super Bowl gig where they were found to be doing an air band to their own recordings and it was revealed that NOBODY that plays the superbowl gets to do it live because of the logistics of the half time show. I thought that it was so fitting to incorporate that into a Mili Vanilil intro as kind of a last laugh!
Unfortunately for them they probably just tried this a bit too early. At a recent music festival of ~40 bands, there was only 1 that didn't use a backing vocal track to perform live (an older rapper). Every other performer used a backing track. Not quite as egregious as a different person singing, but production/autotune + backing vocal would have probably got Milli Vanilli by in today's music industry.
Singing along with a backing track of a recording of the singer's actual voice is totally different than lip syncing to lyrics recorded by another singer and passing it off as them. Way different.
In the 90's during the Euro-Dance phase there were so many "bands", where the people in the music videos or on the cover were not the same people who actually sang the songs. The difference was Milli Vanilli were confronted by it!
They were the image of the group. Thos songs wouldn't have get that massive success without the two charismatic and iconic looking guys. It was the work of both sides.
The incident with the tape skipping happened at Lake Compounce in Bristol, CT. Lake Compounce is cursed and many deaths occurred at the park over the years.
There’s a heartbreaking story underneath all the sensation. They were the biggest thing in the world at the time, but they got the full brunt of the negativity and were basically crucified and shunned like lepers. It cost Rob Pilatus his life in 1998. The original singers failed to make a splash on their own behalf and the musical supervillain who was laughing all the way to the bank again after he squeezed Boney M, was Frank Farian. Fab Morvan luckily has been enjoying a rather successful career as deejay and musician.
Hey- remember when C&C music Factory outsold Milli Vanilli the same year ripping off Martha Wash and having some stand in model dancer pretending to be her? Didn’t sell as many papers or commercials to scapegoat the industry that practiced this HEAVILY back then.
Thanks! To be honest I was just sorta dipping a toe in but the response has been great so yes, I'll do more. Not one per day but maybe one or two a month. I think the next one will be Sting. Thanks for watching!
The industry (RCA records) did a similar thing with Martha Wash who was the singer for Black Box in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Martha is a curvy and voluptuous woman with an exceptional voice. Their music was being played all over the place. However, Black Box never gave Martha credit for her singing and instead had a young, skinny girl (forgot her name) on the cover who also did the lip syncing when performing live.
Yes and this needs to be brought up because these guys were hung out to dry and no one brings up the other people that did the same thing. Thank you for such an educated comment.
After watching the documentary that I can’t even believe took this long to come out, it really took me back to those days as a 80/90s. It’s sad that they took advantage of.
I think Milli Vanilli wouldn't be in our memories the same way if it hadn't been for the revelation. It was part of music history and we're here for it!
Many singers lip sync, there was a lot of jealousy back in the day when Milli Vanilli hit because they were 2 very good looking black guys. So when they saw the opportunity to rip on these black singers they went hard, and it was unfair.
This is pretty standard for most "pop" artists these days. They put a pretty face on some music made by a producer in a studio somewhere, maybe they write their own lyrics but that's about it. Make them sound good with some good editing and it's easy.
It's not jealousy, it's fraud. The fact that anyone has to point that out speaks volumes about your own ethical standards. If you found an artist today who was passing off someone else's work as their own, the reaction would be the same.
..the difference is that they didn’t sing the songs at all. Even in the studio. It was entirely different people. It’s one thing to lip sync to you own record but these guys weren’t on that record anywhere except as a picture. I do understand why they did it and agree that the producer is scum for what he did to them though.
Fab didn't have "a thick German accent" because he's French. Rob was German. He couldn't sing unfortunately, but Fab could. I hate Farian! The boys signed a contract that said they would sing. After finding out the lipsync plan they left MV, but Farian said they owed him cash they couldn't afford so the boys were duped and trapped.. then entirely blamed! RIP Rob
@@wellIdiditagain Yes, it's called Rob & Fab. I was one of the very few that bought it at the time. Even Fab has said Rob had very little to do with that album (watch his Vlad interview). Fab was, and still is, a competent singer and rapper. Rob wasn't, he was a great performer though. Sorry if the truth hurts. ✌️
The dance phenomenon of the mid-nineties Corona, famous for the hits "Baby Baby" and "The Rhythm Of The Night" followed the same blueprint for commercial success. In fact, Corona was a project that featured the Brazilian model Olga Souza as a front girl, with the aid of Italian vocalist Jenny B. and other singers in the studio as "ghost singers". In other words, all performances were lip-synced. No scandal arose.
It wasn't just milli vanilli. The late 80's/early 90's saw several bands/groups get busted for the same thing, or close to it. Songs were assembled, but the music was outstanding! C+C Music Factory, Snap, Technotronic, milli vanilli..
In all honesty, Rob couldn’t sing in key and didn’t have the chops to be a pro. That’s not something you can really teach. Fab has some real talent and just needed to be refined a bit. They were put in a very difficult position. If I was offered a contract and had little to no money I would take it. No one could have foreseen the huge success the songs would achieve and by that point it must’ve been hard to blow the secret.
Vocal Coaches can help a lot, even when you can't sing. A friend of mine sang horribly but he worked with a vocal coach for years and sounds actually pretty good now. If you have the time and money, everyone can turn into a decent singer.
@@19Rena96 I’m sure someone with the desire, time, and money can improve their vocal abilities. It really depends on the style of music, but, to be a professional singer in the R&B or Pop category is a whole other level compared to the casual, karaoke style singer. If you don’t have IT then it’s pretty difficult to break into an industry that’s over saturated with talented voices. I could be wrong though. I’m not a professional by any means.
