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?

😂That's a perfect summing up of this thread.

This thread is mental, impressive in-depth music knowledge mingled with posters talking at cross purposes and getting names and facts mixed up 😂

I heard that Biggie Smalls sang all the vocals for Living in a Box, and Mariah Carey did all the singing in 'You're a mean one, Mr Grinch'.

Meatloaf himself was originally a temporary stand in for Jim Stienman (best composer ever), Jim hired Lorraine Crosby as a backing singer for the studio test sessions, she was never meant to be the touring singer.

You discription of Lorraine and saying it was to do with looks is pretty offensive, she was only 3 year older than Patty Russo who was the touring singer and and 4 years older than Dana Patrick (the girl in the video) and is a very successful singer in her own right.

This also makes me think of Vanilla Ice getting it in the neck for using a Queen sample in Ice Ice Baby (Under Pressure). He pretended it was completely different, which made him look a dishonest twat. Ironically, sampling then became totally mainstream so he would have been better being honest from the start.

The chorus on ‘Play’ by Jennifer Lopez is sung entirely by Christina Milian - didn’t believe it but when you listen, you can’t mistake it. She and other singers have sang for Lopez on many other songs too.

While there are certainly issues with white people stealing the credit for black people's music (eg Cilla "Black" and Dionne Warwick) I don't think the race issue is as clear cut when it comes to dance music and sampling. Uncredited sampling/sampling with dodgy "agreements" was absolutely rife from the mid-80s onwards - I think the general thinking was that everyone's doing it and they can't sue us all. Dance acts sampled from all over the place including from each other and the acts were often fronted by POC themselves. It was more about getting a good hook and getting stuff out there, usually by collectives/collaborators where the concept of ownership didn't fit the performer/writer intellectual property model anyway.

Wasn't it Living in a Box who had Brian May play one of their guitar riffs (uncredited)? The guitarist in the band couldn't nail it and BM was in the next door studio so lent a hand to get the record done? If it's not LIAB, it's a similar status band of that time 🤔

For anyone who remembers Phats & Small, with their late 90s hit Turn Around, singer Ben Ofedu (Vanessa Felt's partner) lives off of his success with that one song...only on the recording they were someone else's sampled vocals!

www.songfacts.com/facts/loleatta-holloway/love-sensation Black Box did use LH’s vocals for Ride on Time. Original track. Marsha Wash did subsequently sing for them and is also the vocals for Everybody Dance Now.

No!
this and the Rasputin death coincidence are incredible.

Uuurrrgh and now I've got Betty Boo doing the do on a loop in my head.🤪

I've already linked to the video above but i'll repost it again. And I said before, if you listen to it, especially the line at exactly 1:00m in, you can hear her voice. I'm not claiming that she sang the entire song, or all of Caron Wheeler's other songs, but there has definitely been some vocal mixing going on in the studio which is widely common (not a faceless voice singing the entirety of the song and the 'star' wordlessly miming to it)

And it's not inconceivable. MC has done many interviews where she talks about being a ghost singer brought in to sing since the age of 14 on tracks that went on to be well-known (though she's never named which ones).

I think it's a bit of a stretch to claim a racial element to Cilla Black covering Dionne Warwick's US hits here. They were written by two white guys for starters.

@Keyansier it still doesn’t ring true for me. S2S had several great vocalists in their collective and I believe recorded in London. Why would they have vocals added by a US ghost singer and then not credit her when other back up vocalists on their tracks have been credited? Not only that, why would rising star Mariah Carey not make it known that she sang on the album? If nothing else, it would help her credibility as an artist of black origin. I have listened to the part you specify and yes I can hear how it might be argued that her voice could be in there, but it just doesn’t ring true.

Finally, the only place that states as fact that Mariah’s vocals are on that album is Wiki….hardly a reliable source. Anyway, it’s not something to argue over, we can agree to disagree on this one. 🙂

I've listened to that track linked to several times and while there are similarities to MC's voice, I really don't think it is her. It does not sound like her.

The Soul II Soil debut album was recorded in London with British producers. There's no way they got a random American backing singer in to record vocals

Fuzzbox was most definitely not Heather Small. 😁

@Clymene agreed.

Love that song, you've inspired me to update my Spotify!

@WeAreTheHeroes Warwick herself said that's what happened. It was the timing and everything - she released a song, Cilla Black-nee-White did a version for the white folk straightaway.

Like, a note for note version, a karaoke cover.

Warwick herself said that's what happened. It was the timing and everything - she released a song, Cilla Black-nee-White did a version for the white folk straightaway.

Interesting - and very sad. Just who were these white people (I'm white) who would have chosen to hear Cilla's screeching angry cat sounds over Dionne's beautiful, smooth, velvet tones, just based on what colour the singer's skin happened to be? I suppose it's one small self-imposed punishment for the racists.

The Ride on Time sample was just a sample of a fragment of a much better original disco song called Love Sensation. Not much different in spirit to that weird Tiny Dancer remix thing going around the charts now.

@WeAreTheHeroes God knows, really. When you listen to the two side by side there's no selling point to Cilla's at all. (Other than that she was white.) But ... people bought it. Stupid people I guess.

Isn't Elton involved with that one, though? It is quite mediocre, but I suppose he can do what he likes with his own stuff.