Since the early 1990s, the band Milli Vanilli has been synonymous with fraud, deception, and scandal. The European pop duo found near-overnight success with their debut album Girl You Know It’s True. In less than a year, they had three No. 1 hits, a six-time platinum album, and a Grammy award for Best New Artist. Soon, however, the public found out they were lip-synching the entire time. The fallout was swift and ruthless.
The group was stripped of their Grammy, dropped from their record label, and sued for fraud by fans. But while their music careers were destroyed, the producers and record label executives who were in on it all walked away unscathed. The whole story is told in Milli Vanilli, a new Paramount+ documentary.
Director Luke Korem found inspiration for his film after watching a YouTube video of Fab Morvan (a member of Milli Vanilli) singing and sharing his story at The Moth in New York City.
Korem tells KCRW, “He had this beautiful voice, and I thought, ‘Wait, wait a minute. I thought the story was [that] two guys, who were talentless hacks, conned everybody?’ And I was like, ‘Why would he ever agree to lip sync?’”
Milli Vanilli was composed of the German-French duo of Morvan and Rob Pilatus, who met in Germany. Immediately, as Korem explains, they became friends and eventually met producer Frank Farian, who gave them a record deal. “He gave them some advanced money, and they signed a contract, which they admittedly did not read.”
Farian told them that they would not be singing — and instead, lip-syncing.
“This is where the documentary gets very interesting because we tell it from multiple perspectives. So we have Ingrid, who is Frank's lover/assistant producer. She says they willingly accepted the deal. Fab says they did not willingly accept it, and they felt trapped because they'd taken money which they couldn't get back because they'd already spent it.”
However, no one was expecting the band to get so big, selling upwards of 30 million singles and 10 million albums, Korem says. So they went along with the lie.
“It was too good to be true. And as they became bigger and bigger and bigger, they had to keep repeating the lie, not only in every interview, but to their family. They had to lie every single day. And that became unbearable to the point where they started getting involved in heavy drug use. So Rob and Fab’s friendship began to splinter as the lie became greater.”
Who was actually singing? Korem says multiple people were involved as so-called session singers. That includes Brad Howell, Jodie and Linda Rocco, and Charles Shaw.
“They received a small fee to sing on a track,” Korem explains. “Fab and Rob received a fee for performing, for appearances. And the only one who made residuals, the majority of where you make your money as a singer, is Brad Howell, the lead vocalist because he was part of a union. Everybody else received nothing other than their recording session. So Frank Farian received the lion's share of everything that was made off Milli Vanilli.”
Eventually, the duo signed with Arista Records, led by Clive Davis. Those involved contend that they didn’t know about the lip-synching, Korem says. So why’d they go along with it?
“They made hundreds of millions of dollars. This was the biggest moneymaker for them. I mean, they had Whitney Houston, and I believe Milli Vanilli was either one or two that year in terms of earnings for Arista Records. They were enormous. They had three No. 1 hits, four if you count international, on their debut album. That's more than Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber combined.”
The group’s undoing came after their 1990 Grammy win, which Korem says hit some people in the music industry personally.
“They were competing against people like Indigo Girls [and] other singer-songwriters. … They were so big, and they came out of nowhere. Think about this. In the span of 18 months, they went from anonymous to superstars. They attracted a lot of haters along the way. There were also a lot of rumors about them. A lot of people in the industry knew they weren't singing. And so when they won, people were looking for a way to take them down. And I also think that the wrath that did come was in part due to the color of their skin.”
Ultimately, Korem says not everyone faced the same wrath that Morvan and Pilatus did.
“The con wasn't even their idea. It was Frank Farian’s Idea. They said yes, which they admit they're culpable. This is not a victim film by any means. They were part of it. But the machine and the people who made the spoils — the majority of the money that was made — they did not receive. … They received a lot of hate. It even cost Rob's life. Clive Davis and Arista Records did nothing to soften the blow.”