Sunday, November 7, 2010

Milli Vanilli

Milli Vanilli was a pop/dance music project formed by Frank Farian in Germany in 1988, fronted by Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. The group's debut album achieved high sales internationally which earned them a Grammy Award for Best New Artist Feb. 21, 1990.The act became one of the most popular pop acts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, their success turned to infamy when their Grammy was revoked after it was revealed that the lead vocals on the record were not the actual voices of Morvan and Pilatus.In 1998, ten years after Milli Vanilli's initial debut, Rob Pilatus was found dead in a Frankfurt hotel of an apparent drug overdose.
When Frank Farian developed the concept of Milli Vanilli, he chose to feature vocals by Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howell, and twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco; however, he felt that those singers lacked a marketable image. He then recruited Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, two younger model/dancers he found dancing in a Munich dance club, to front the act. Milli Vanilli's debut album All or Nothing, was released in Europe in mid-1988, with Rob and Fab's pictures on the front and center of the albums, but no mention of who actually sang the songs. The success of the record caught the attention of Arista Records who signed the duo. Arista deleted several tracks from the original album, added several new ones (including a new track written by Diane Warren, "Blame It on the Rain"), remixed many of the tracks and renamed the album to Girl You Know It's True for release in the American market in early 1989.This version of the album went six times platinum and led to the re-release of the title track, which peaked at number 2 on the Hot 100 in April of that year and was certified platinum.The U.K. release featured the original first album and the remix album together as "2 X 2". Even greater commercial success followed, as the pair's next three singles "Baby Don't Forget My Number", "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" and "Blame It on the Rain" all reached number 1. A fifth and final single "All or Nothing", also made the Top 5 in the beginning of 1990 in a remixed form which sampled the "Keep On Movin'" beat from UK soul act Soul II Soul. Milli Vanilli's meteoric rise to pop music superstardom culminated with a Grammy Award for Best New Artist on February 22, 1990.

15 comments:

  1. I like a few of their songs, they were alright.

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  2. i remember my mom listening to some of this lol

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  3. Great blog! Following! :D
    I know this song, but didn't know that that is their song! :D

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  4. interesting..I want a new post..:)

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  5. they had some great music back in the day

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  6. lol that was classic when that song kept repeating during their live performance

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  7. Oh dang, that name is so familiar!

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