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Milli Vanilli has been living in my head rent-free for years and I’ve been meaning to get my thoughts out of my head for a very long time. I’ve listened to both the Milli Vanilli and Rob and Fab albums. I’ve watched interviews and documentaries about them. I’ve read articles about them. I feel like I learn something new about both the group, the music industry, and human beings in general with every piece about them that I consume. This morning I saw an article about an official biopic that is co-produced by one of the children of the voices behind Milli Vanilli and I had to finally sit down and write out my thoughts. This may be a long one.
If you don’t know who they are, here’s a good documentary about them and the lip-syncing industry as a whole.
All the Lip Sync Scandals! Mime and Punishment (Full Documentary)
Fab Morvan on the Rise and Fall of Milli Vanilli (Full Interview)
In case you’re not interested in the videos, in short, Milli Vanilli was a popular musical duo named Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan from Germany in the late 1980s with hits like Girl You Know It’s True, Blame it On the Rain, and Baby Don’t Forget My Number. They gained popularity, sold many albums, and even won a Grammy award, only to have it stripped from them after there was speculation and eventually a confession that they didn’t really sing on their albums. They were the faces of the group. Rob couldn’t handle the pressure and spiraled until he eventually passed away. Fab went on to release music with his real voice and has been able to redeem himself in Europe. To this day he still does shows around Europe singing both his original songs and Milli Vanilli songs.
My Thoughts
I don’t know why I’ve cared so much about Milli Vanilli since I was a child. I mean, the songs were great, regardless of who sang them. Rob and Fab were entertaining enough to watch. Let’s face it, without them, those records wouldn’t have sold the way that they did. Their faces were necessary. However, I’m constantly thinking about the human psyche and emotions and I suppose the case of Milli Vanilli is a great example of greed, shame, ridicule, desperation, and a great show of how people can turn on you just as quickly as they once claimed to love you. As of this writing I’m reading/listening to Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown. I’m always reading books about social psychology and the more I write, the more I realize that Milli Vanilli is a case study.
Ghost singing has been around since the music and movie industries began. Tons of popular songs have either had ghost singers or they were ghost singers. One of the most well-known singers who doesn’t really sing is Jennifer Lopez. Several of her hits include vocals sung by someone else. Darlene Love sang uncredited on several tracks back in the 1960’s. This isn’t about them though. I have an article linked below if you’re interested.
https://www.distractify.com/entertainment/2018/09/17/1NoEb3/pop-songs-with-ghost-singers
On a drive home one day, I listened to Rob and Fab’s “official” debut album and was impressed. Under different circumstances, I believe that album would’ve done pretty well. Fab’s vocals were pretty good, Rob was a good hype man, the music was great to dance to, and they were beautiful, which was what sold Milli Vanilli in the first place. I’m sure it would have done great on the dance charts. But it didn’t. Well, it did…sort of. They sold around 2,000 copies. Apparently, there were only a couple thousand copies printed, period. On top of that, they released the album in the US. Had they released it in Germany or Switzerland or anywhere else in the world, for that matter, it probably would have done better. The US was the most critical of them.
I feel like many people, if given the chance, would do what Rob and Fab did. Millions of people are on social media every single day doing things way worse than lip-syncing for way less than what Rob and Fab initially got before the scandal. There have even been game shows like Lip Sync Battle that were very popular.
Rob and Fab were young, hungry, and borderline homeless when they were noticed for their beautiful faces and dancing. They had actually made a few appearances on German TV as a group called Empire Bizarre before they became Milli Vanilli. A producer by the name of Frank Farian offered them more money than what they had probably ever been offered at the time. They were struggling financially and due to a language barrier and plain ol’ immaturity (they were in their very early 20s at the time) they took the money without realizing what they were getting themselves into. The only way to get out of the game was to pay back the money they had already spent. Do you realize how many people, even now, would happily take the opportunity to lip sync and look pretty for a few dollars? Folks do worse on TikTok and Instagram for likes.
Here’s the thing that I noticed about Rob and Fab and it is the thing that led me to write this brain dump in the first place: Resilience. Specifically, I wanted to note how Fab has the strength, resilience, and leadership quality that Rob, sadly, did not have. I know very limited details about their respective stories pre-Milli Vanilli, but I do know that Rob had suffered some abuse as a child and had been orphaned, which, in my unprofessional opinion, played a big role in his fragility. Whenever I watch their old performances I immediately notice that Fab is often the one who starts dancing first. He’s almost always on beat, he looks the most confident.
They actually lip-synced horribly, but so did a lot of singers who actually sang their own songs but had to lip sync anyway. A couple that comes to mind is when Chaka Khan and Marvin Gaye, respectively, were on Soul Train and they lip-synced their songs very, very badly. It was almost like they forgot the words to their own songs or just didn’t care. Their voices were undeniable, though.
Back to my point, Fab would lip sync and dance his heart out, fully committed. Rob would be the one most likely to misstep or miss a cue. No matter how many performances they did, he always looked uncomfortable. Sometimes you could catch him glancing over at Fab for direction while Fab kept his eyes on the audience. When their tape skipped during a live performance, Rob was the first one to run off the stage. Fab was/is the better singer of the two and ended up taking the lead when they did release their own album. Fab is the one still living. This isn’t to insult Rob at all, just pointing out a few obvious differences in personality.
It seems a lot more people are forgiving now that its 30 years later, but the backlash they received at the time was ridiculous and unfair. However, I look at Fab and I am simply amazed. Literally, at one point the whole world (and when I say the whole world, I mean the USA. Although I don’t know for sure, I don’t think it was as big a deal in Europe as it was here in the US.) hated and mocked him for something that wasn’t entirely his fault. He went through a depression but then he came back and continued trying to do the only thing he ever wanted to do, make music. To be laughed at no matter where you go? That can kill you. Ultimately, it’s what killed Rob. In Fab’s performances in the years since he’s singing live in front of large crowds that are smiling and singing along. I imagine that around the time of the scandal he may not have thought that would ever happen.
Unfortunately, Rob and Fab were the sacrificial lambs and they didn’t deserve most of the hate that they got. I blame their producer who orchestrated the whole thing from the start, Frank Farian. I blame the industry as a whole because I wholeheartedly believe that someone on the Grammy committee knew what it was when they awarded the Grammy to them. As I mentioned earlier, ghost singing has been a thing since the beginning of show business. That’s a whole other rant.
I don’t expect everyone to understand what I’m trying to say and I’m not totally sure I articulated it very well. One of the main takeaways is that I feel many of us could learn a lot from Fab Morvan. It has taken me a long time to learn that I don’t have to always try to monetize what I’m good at, that I can do things regardless of whether I’m good or bad at it just for the love of doing it. I didn’t learn that from Fab, but Fab, along with some other famous personalities, serves as a reminder to stay strong and do what I love. I’m sad that addiction and depression took Rob’s life. I’m happy that Fab has not only continued to live but has thrived despite the ridicule he still receives three decades later. Not everybody can handle that.
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