Pop duo Milli Vanilli is stripped of their Grammy Award - November 19th, 1990

On this day in 1990, The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences rescinded the Grammy Award for Best New Artist from pop duo Milli Vanilli.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that proves there's more than one way to
make history. I'm Gabelusier, and today we're talking about the

(00:25):
rise and fall of Milli Vanilli, a German French R
and B duo who became global pariahs for not actually
singing their songs. The day was November nineteen. The National

(00:47):
Academy of Recording, Arts and Sciences rescinded the Grammy Award
for Best New Artists from pop duo Milli Vanilli. It
was the first time in the history of the Grammys
that an award had been taken away. This unprecedented move
came just four days after the duo's producer, Frank Farrian,

(01:11):
revealed in a press conference that they hadn't sung a
single note on the debut album for which they had
won the award. The public and the Academy had been
under the impression that all the singing on the nine
album Girl You Know It's True was performed by the
two frontmen of Millie Vanilly, Rob Pilotis and Fabrice Morvin

(01:35):
a k A. Fab. In reality, the male vocals were
provided by three uncredited singers, Charles Shaw, John Davis and
Brad Howell. To be clear, it's not that uncommon in
the entertainment industry for the work of numerous contributors to
be overshadowed by the more public facing members of a production.

(01:59):
Sometimes times an album is recorded by studio musicians instead
of the touring members of a band, and many performers
lip sync their songs on stage to prevent sounding out
of breath during their complicated dance routines. The difference with
Milli Vanilli is that they didn't credit these behind the

(02:20):
scenes contributors where it counts the most. In the liner
notes of their album. The credits in their multi platinum
debut album simply read vocals Fab and Rob. Academy president
Michael Green specifically cited this as the official reason for
stripping the duo of their award. He explained, quote, I

(02:43):
think that if Milli Vanilli just had a line that
said Millie Vanilli is with a list of all the
real singers, not just Fab and Rob, we would have
never taken this action. Our action is predicated on a
falsification of label credit. So why didn't the duo credit
the real singers. According to Rob Pilotis, it wasn't just

(03:08):
an oversight, but an intentional act. A few days after
Farian revealed the deception, Pelotis told the l a Times quote,
we sold our souls to the devil. We lied to
our families and our friends. We let down our fans.
We realize exactly what we did to achieve our success.

(03:31):
We made some very big mistakes, and we apologize. The
devil in question was allegedly none other than Frank Farian.
The German musician and songwriter had made a career out
of pairing attractive performers with other people's vocals. In the
nineteen seventies, Afarian put together a German disco group called

(03:54):
bony M. The group's vocals were ostensibly provided by four
Caribbean singers, but in reality it was Farian himself singing
on the group's first album. When that ruse paid off,
Farian decided to do it again, and when he met
the dancers slash models Rob and Fab in early he

(04:17):
knew he had found the faces of his next big act.
It's a matter of public knowledge that Farian signed Robin
Fab to a record deal, but it's unclear at which point,
the duo knew that they wouldn't actually be singing on
the album. According to Fab, they had no idea they
had been hired just a lip sync. Varian had played

(04:40):
them an instrumental version of the Girl You Know It's
True album, which he already had recorded and ready to go.
When Rob and Fab signed the contract, they say they
were under the impression they would really be providing the
vocals for that album, despite them being dancers not singers. However,

(05:00):
it later turned out that Farion had also recorded vocals
with professional singers earlier that year. Fab says that by
the time he and Rob figured out what was going on,
they had already spent the advance money for the album
and couldn't back out of the project until they had
paid their debt to Ferian. What none of them expected

(05:23):
Ferion included was that the Milli Vanilli album would become
a huge success. They figured it would be played in
German nightclubs and discothexts, but would never find an audience
large enough to discover or care about the misattributed vocals. However,
Girl you Know It's True shot to number one in Germany,

(05:45):
and it wasn't long after that the group signed a
deal with Arista Records. When Girl You Know It's True
was released in the US, Millie Vanilli scored five top
five hits on the Billboard Hot one hundred and the

(06:06):
album sold over six million copies, with millions more sold
around the world. The sudden success convinced Rob and Fab
to keep their secret well after their debt had been paid.
By then, they were addicted to fame and fortune, along
with actual drugs, and they weren't willing to give up

(06:27):
the lifestyle. But the truth very nearly came out anyway.
In the summer of nine, when the group's backing tracks
started to skip during a live performance, the words girl
you Know It's True repeated over and over until the
horrified duo finally ran off stage. Concert Goers didn't seem

(06:50):
bothered by what happened, but the media became suspicious, and
rumors started to swirl that Rob and Fab may not
be the ones singing on their record. The incident marked
the beginning of the end for Milli Vanilli, and the
duo could sense it coming. After winning their Grammy in
February of Rob and Fab pushed back against Farian, insisting

(07:15):
that they'd be allowed to sing on their next album.
The arguments grew more heated throughout the year, eventually leading
Farian to call it quits and come clean publicly. A
few days after his press conference in mid November, the
Recording Academy announced its decision to revoke Milli Vanilli's award.

(07:35):
Soon after, Rob and Fab called their own press conference,
where they gave back the physical Grammy awards, a move
they had been planning even before the Academy's formal announcement.
Robin Fab suggested the awards be given to the three
singers who actually performed on the album, but president Michael
Greene said that wasn't an option. In the aftermath, a

(08:00):
STA Records claimed it had been unaware of the deception
the Rob and Fab dispute that no fewer than twenty
six lawsuits were filed by former fans who claimed the
record company had tricked them. In the end, a Cook
County judge approved a class action settlement that entitled thousands
of customers to partial refunds two dollars for Milli Vanilli cassettes,

(08:25):
three dollars for CD s, and five percent of the
ticket price for concerts. After going public, Ferry and Capitalized
on the scandal by releasing a follow up album featuring
the real singers of the first one. It was titled
The Moment of Truth and was credited to the real
Milli Vanilli. As for Rob and Fab, they tried to

(08:49):
make a comeback two years later, performing for Real on
the Arsenio Hall Show and releasing a self titled second album.
That record sold an abysm mold two thousand copies, and
the duo spiraled deeper into drug abuse. For Rob, that
descent sadly continued five years later in he died of

(09:12):
an overdose at the age of thirty three. Fab however,
managed to get sober and start a new life as
a public speaker in radio DJ. He even released a
few solo albums over the next decade or so, though
none of them approached the success he'd had with Millie Vanilli.
In a fun twist, Fab actually returned to his controversial

(09:35):
roots in when he teamed up with John Davis, one
of the real singers from the Milli Vanilli album. The
unlikely duo sang together for a series of recordings and
live performances called Face meets Voice, a Milli Vanilli Experience.
Looking back, the scandal surrounding the group seems overblown. Sure

(09:59):
it wasn't Rob in Fab's voices on the record, but
it was them on the stage, entertaining crowds with their
charm and dance moves night after night. That might not
have been worth a Grammy, but it should have counted
for more than the public scorn that dogged them for
years afterward. For my part, the only thing I hold

(10:20):
against Milli Vanilli is that ridiculous name, which I've had
to say way too many times today. But in case
you're wondering, the name was likely inspired not by a milkshake,
but by a closed down disco in Berlin, though partial
credit may also belong to a British pop group called
Scritty Polity. One thing we know for certain is that

(10:43):
the name does not mean positive energy in Turkish, which
is what Rob and Fab claimed back in the early nineties.
In reality, Millie means national in Turkish, while Vanilli doesn't
mean anything at all. It's further proof that when it
comes to Milli Vanilli, nothing is quite as it seems.

(11:07):
I'm gay, Bluesier and hopefully you now know a little
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(11:31):
Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank
you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow
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