To think what happened to Milli Vanilli is so sad

[ineeduourhelp]

I was under 5 when this whole scandal happened so don't remember it at the time but till this day still play the track and absolutely love girl you know it's true.

I also have a crush on them (especially Fab 🤣)

But on a serious note it's so so sad what happened to these guys it breaks my heart - mainly because they could actually sing!

It's so bizarre they were not allowed to take over and start singing themselves as I'm convinced they could have had fame in their own right.

Was anyone perhaps a bit older to remember when all this happened?

Farrell was probably too busy being completely out of it, tbf. They obviously had good drugs in them days 😁

I thought frozen ( let it go ) was sang by Idina Menzel

Similar has happened in film history for decades.

It's the plot of Singing in the Rain!

Marni Nixon provided the vocals for 100's of the famous leading ladies in Hollywood

Didn't she sing for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, when Hepburn got the part ahead of Julie Andrews - who could actually do her own singing!

Nope - not buying it!!

This thread is making me 😂
Milli vanilla were HOT!
But a year later I was well into the rave scene and it defo is not heather smalls on ride on time, it's the fabulous lolleatta Holloway who has sadly passed away. Many, many old house tunes feature her, she's a legend from the 70's disco scene in Chicago... where/when and how house music originally started. And house music along with hip hop all started with disco, the hosts (mc's) and the incredible dj's who mixed up all the music like never before.
I'm a bit 😆 at the Maria Carey suggestions!

Wasn't that Frank Farian, the producer of of Boney M, who sang vocals purporting to be one of the band as presented? I don't understand why he did that, as he was/is a brilliant and and highly-respected producer, but his vocal talents are quite mediocre. Why wouldn't he have stuck to what he was great at and got in another actual singer, instead of hopping in to the other side of the studio himself?!

This one is a bit niche, but I don't know if people are familiar with 'Bad For Good' - the album released by Jim Steinman, with a number of songs that also popped up elsewhere sung by Meat Loaf and his other associated acts.

IIRC, Meat wasn't available/well/they'd fallen out, so Jim decided to just go ahead and sing it himself. He was (imho) unfairly criticised for his 'weak' voice - probably didn't help that people would naturally compare his vocals to Meat's - but three of the more demanding songs on BFG were actually sung by 'backing singer' Rory Dodd, who I believe was never credited at the time.

I also find it incredible to think that the uncredited female singer on 'Dead Ringer For Love' just happened to be the mega-famous Cher!

In the movie Idina Menzel does sing it but in the released version it's Demi Lovato (but the original song by Idina was so popular and catchy they released it anyway). See also: Angela Lansbury singing "Beauty and the Beast" in the film but in the released version it's sung by Celine Dion, and Lea Salonga singing "Reflection" in Mulan but the released version is sung by Christina Aguilera.

I think there was also a 'disagreement' about Snap's 'The Power' - using as the main hook of the song a sample from another song by the amazing Jocelyn Brown, without her permission, crediting her or paying her any royalties.

I loved Milli Vanilli! Had their cassette! My cousin had her driver’s license and her own car. We’d listen to that tape over and over again, driving up and down the freeway. We were 17. I had the biggest crush on poor Rob. Every girl did back then. It was really tragic what happened to them.

Same thing happened to Martha Wallsh of the Weather Girls.
The real singer on Black Box's follow up hits and Gonna Make You Sweat by C&C Music Factory

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Wash

*Wash

It was pretty normal for dance music acts to feature dancers/mimers on their visual content and uncredited samples/singers for their audio content. With samples it really was a bit of a free for all with copyright getting flouted all over the place.

A lot of those kind of tracks never made the mainstream charts so it never became a story for them. I think the problem with Milli Vanilli is that once the publicity got going they were sold as vocalists rather than a dance act and then people got fucked off plus they were very high profile due to good sales so the press made it a story.

Agree it was awful though. They didn't do anything different than loads of other people at the time, except be more successful and go mainstream.

It was Heather Small.

You don't have to buy it, it's a fact. Anyone with working ears and who is familiar with what Mariah Carey sounds like (especially back then) should be able to hear her in parts of the song.

The sampling thing was SO widespread, look up on Youtube some of the Zero-G datafile sampler CDs - you'll recognise loads of the generic samples that got used in mega hits - such as this one

I don’t know about the real singer of Ride on Time, but I do know that Heather Small also sang on a song that was fronted by some model in the video/TOTP. I think both Ride on Time and the Heather Small song featured on a TOTP compilation special thingy a couple of years back, hence the confusion?

I remember totp was like this a lot. People not singing when they were performing. It was very confusing as a child.

A lot of those kind of tracks never made the mainstream charts so it never became a story for them. I think the problem with Milli Vanilli is that once the publicity got going they were sold as vocalists rather than a dance act and then people got fucked off plus they were very high profile due to good sales so the press made it a story.

True. The KLF made their whole career out of the fact that they were mashing samples together, but they never pretended they were actually performing on them, other than maybe the odd minor part. Bill and Jimmy's skills were clearly in the production and nobody ever pretended (or believed) otherwise.

They could sing? I remember seeing a video of one them attempting to 'prove' it was them and it was embarrassingly awful, he sounds like he's grunting and it's out of tune (and they're playing the female vocal LOUD over it to try to cover it up a bit here):

It's Heather Smalls. They didn’t have permissions for Loleatta: www.nme.com/features/30-years-full-story-ride-on-time-controversial-80s-megahit-black-box-2547708

@Keyansier that's so interesting how they have different versions etc , thank you :) I'm
Gonna tell my elder daughter as my granddaughter has discovered frozen now ! 😅

@ohthejoy21
I'm a bit 😆 at the Maria Carey suggestions!

Even if you only listen to the part singing from 1:00 you can clearly hear this is Mariah back in the day.

Actually, I might be wrong:

It wasn't Heather Small it was one of the Weather Girls.

I've just had to Google it, and apparently it is actually right on time, but called Ride on Time.

I'm so confused!