DJariya

Decker

That looks solid. I'll watch. Such a weird story.

stvn1974

Yeah, the whole thing was weird. I am just glad we don't have music written by 40 person committees where the singer shows up and does their karaoke bit over the already recorded music nowadays.

DJariya

VH1 Behind the Music did an episode on them probably in the late 90s. But, the episode was made before Pilatus died and then they did an epilogue a year or so later.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394380/

But, a full length story of their rise and fall should be interesting to watch.

Inhumans99

I keep forgetting that they sold a ton of albums, and I seem to remember an Awards show where they were introduced and they both came from the rear of the auditorium and made their way to the stage microphones in hand singing their hit song, it was a rather exuberant performance. Now, I think folks accept that singers mostly lip synch stuff when it comes to Award show performances, but if only the audience knew how on the nose it is that they were lip synching their performance.

Alan Smithee

Anyone who lipsyncs shouldn’t even be eligible for any award. This whole thing just made me sigh, Milli Vanilli’s music was terrible even before the story came out. I later discovered producer Frank Farian’s earlier group Boney M though and they were great, maybe I have lower standards for disco. I enjoy bad music and guilty pleasures but Milli Vanilli was just blah either way. “Girl you know it’s true, ooh ooh ooh I love you-“ yeah, that’s award-worthy songwriting.

Spiderbite

Here is a great little podcast that I love (called Bizarre Albums) that did a quick history of the entire thing plus goes over the "Real" Milli Vanilli album sequel. Only 20 minutes long but very interesting if you are a fan or interested in the story.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3mx...c8b5f8846b4b27

GuessWho

Comments often focus on the syncing. Lip syncing is never cool with me, but in this case, it is the lesser of the offences with Milli Vanilli.

The larger issue is that it was never them in the first place.

Coral

Yeah, lip syncing wasn't really the issue and is pretty much standard today with most of these crappy pop-stars.
The issue was that they sang nothing... live or in the studio. They were total imposters.

Toby Dramit

This was a good listen ...

PhantomStranger

Honestly, their album was good. Or whoever actually sang it.

L. Ron zyzzle

I liked plenty of songs off of that album, and don't feel like they were imposters. They were great performers, and they were hired to pretend that they were the singers so that was dishonest, but the hate they got was way over the top, and I believe was why Pilatus killed himself.

andicus

It was pretty out of character for my musical tastes, but I did like a few songs from the album.

The weird thing was that when it came out that it wasn't actually them, I had friends tease me about it, like I gave a fuck who actually performed it. I wasn't a teenage girl (or boy, not that there's anything wrong with that) thinking they were cute. I just liked the music.

Dr. DVD

Looks interesting but doubt I will subscribe just to view it at this point. While they did not sing any actual notes on the album, there is so much auto-tune and the like done today that what makes it to a studio version of a pop album seems to have very little semblance of the performer's real voice. I hope it covers the fact that Fabrice worked to improve his voice (which really wasn't that bad, Rob left a bit to be desired though) in the following years and eventually was able to do actual singing on his own.

Spiderbite

^Wow. That is great. Hell, he likely sounds better now than probably the original guy who sang/rapped the "real" version if that guy tried to sing it now. He actually sounds better thank some of the current Top 40 performers if you listen to them try to sing live.

Glad to see a little redemption. The duo definitely got fucked with way too much hate.

Dr. DVD

Here's one where he sounds even better.

milo bloom

I've always wondered why they didn't just use the actual vocalists, but I guess they didn't have the visual pizazz that Rob and Fab did. I mean, heck, just give them tamborines and have them be back up singers for the real ones and do it that way.

Hazel Motes

As I’ve gotten older whenever these guys get mentioned the more I feel bad for them. Especially for the one who took his own life.

JeffTheAlpaca

Shouldn't this be moved to the music forum?

Oh wait....

Hazel Motes

That doesn’t even work by your own logic.

Dr. DVD

For the time it occurred, you are absolutely correct. I think the sympathy many people have for them (myself included) in current times is due to the fact that even when an artist records lyrics themselves , so much vocal enhancement and engineering is added to the point to where little resemblance is there of the actual voice. The stark contrast between how they sounded for real and the voices on the album is pretty much the norm nowadays when it comes to a lot of music. Like I said before, Fabrice sounded quite similar to the voice on the record, but Rob kind of stunk it up. I hope the movie spends time on the aftermath.

Coral

So basically the bar has been set so low now that past musical atrocities are now acceptable.

Spiderbite

Have you listened to the current Pop Top 40?

PhantomStranger

The acceptance of Autotune really changed how people view singing.

Coral

That's the low bar I was talking about.