Busted! This Day In Music – Milli Vanilli Caught Lip Syncing

“Girl you know it’s true” – Milli Vanilli never sang a word on their album and nobody knew until this day in 1989 when they were performing on the Club MTV tour at a stop in Bristol, Connecticut.  In front of thousands of fans, their pre-recorded track got stuck, and the line “girl you know it’s” started repeating.  Over and over and over again.  The two panicked and ran off stage in a hurry.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in November of 1990, Rob Pilatus said “I knew right then and there, it was the beginning of the end for Milli Vanilli,”.

Even though the incident at the time seemed to be no big deal, and other artists on the same tour also used backing tracks, people started to question.  But the duo continued on and released a few more hits including “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Blame It On The Rain”.   Their success continued and they went on to earn a Grammy for Best new Artist.  Then things started to unravel.   As the media started to pick up on the story, the pressure forced German producer and creator of the group, to admit in November that Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan are just for “show” and that studio vocalists did all the singing on their album.

So it was revealed Milli Vanilli were #fakenews and not only didn’t sing at that concert but didn’t sing a note on their album.  They lost their Grammy and their career was pretty much over.

Blame It On The Rain?  Nope.  Blame it on the German producer that put together the “show”.

Categorised in: Afternoons

This post was written by Carrie Buchanan