Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Tragic Downfall of Milli Vanilli

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Milli Vanilli was a pop duo assembled in the late 1980s by German music producer Frank Farian—the mastermind behind Boney M.—and fronted by dancers Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, who lip-synced to vocals recorded by session singers. The duo skyrocketed to fame with hits like “Girl You Know It’s True”, even winning a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1990. But their bubble burst when Farian revealed that they never sang on the tracks, leading to the unprecedented revocation of their Grammy and condemnation from fans and critics alike.If you think about it, they were kind of ahead of their time#truecrime #truestory #90s

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It's causing issues in everyone's marriage. My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumbo subscribers. Terms apply. Remember when those guys won a Grammy for an album they lip synced on?

And it was like the biggest news in the world? Well, the story starts with this guy, Frank. And Frank is a successful music producer, living in Germany, and this dude will do just about anything to be rich. Even deceive people. And one day in 1974, he gets an idea of how to do just that. Why not create a music act where the performers just lip sync the vaults, Basically, he wants to make it where the pop star doesn't really have to be a good singer,

they just have to look the part. And so he tries this out with a music act in Germany called Boney M. And it works! Boni M sees some success. 14 years later, he decides to try again. He gets a bunch of session singers together and they create a song called, Girl You Know It's True. And you probably heard it, I don't know, Girl You Know It's True.

Ooh, ooh, I love you. You know that song. And after that, he finds two handsome guys to lip sync to the song. These two guys. They're named Robin Fab. And Robin Fab, they're two unemployed dancers who can kind of sing, but not as well as the session singers that Frank actually has on the song. And so Frank asks Robin Fab if they want to be pop stars.

All they have to do is lip sync over this pre-recorded song and pretend it's them. no one will ever know we're gonna be so rich. And Rob and Fab hear this plan and they're like, all right, all right. And so they form a pop music group known as Millie Vanilli. And so Rob and Fab, they get to work. They hit the studio and they start recording an album. Wait, wait, no, actually, they don't do that at all.

The session singers do that. So I guess Rob and Fab just chill at home while Frank and the session musicians record the album. Anyway, in 1988, they released that album in Europe. It's called All or Nothing. And it actually gets some traction. The album reaches top 40 in a bunch of countries. And Girl You Know It's True is a hit right away. And it goes number one in Germany. Then they sign with a record label in the U.S. And they retitle their album and call the whole thing, Girl You Know It's True. And Girl You Know It's True, the album blows the

fuck up. And it sells 10 million copies worldwide. And it ends up having quite a few number one hits on it. And suddenly, Rob and Fab are super famous. And they're like walking red carpets, they're on the covers of a bunch of different magazines, and their music videos are playing on MTV, and they're like dancing, and they're doing the whole pop star thing. And no one knows it's not really them singing on the album, because that's what they tell everyone.

And when you look at the liner notes for the album, it says the vocals are by Rob and Fab. However, when they're doing interviews, people start to notice that they're speak with heavy accents because Rob is German and Fabb is French. Oh, it's great to win our achievement, but of course the next album, you know, has to be as same as good as the second or as the first or better. So people are like, how do they speak with a heavy accent but not sing with one?

I mean, you know, it is possible. Adele does it. But here's where Rob, Fab and Frank's scheme starts to fall apart. The next year in 1989, they're performing at a concert in Connecticut in front of a crowd of about 80,000 people. And so they're up there on stage and they're dancing and they're hyping up the crowd and they're lip syncing. But then when they get to the chorus of Girl You Know It's True, the track starts skipping and one line plays over and over again.

And it's all embarrassing and the guys they have to run off stage because they're not sure what else to do. Now, as funny as that is, that actually doesn't ruin their career. Because, you know, sometimes singers use backing vocal tracks while performing live so they can dance and run around stage and not run out of breath and stuff. It's very common. But also, there were no social media platforms during this time for this moment to go viral. So, Rob and Fab are safe. But then they run into another problem.

One of the original session singers for Millie Vanilli's album, he sees all the success they're having, and their songs are like hitting number one, and I guess he's mad that he's not getting the recognition he feels. like he deserves. So he tells a New York newspaper that he was one of the real singers on the album and that Rob and Fabb are just straight up frauds. And this story starts to get a little traction. And so Frank, you know, the original producer of Millie Vanilli, he knows this is bad. I mean, it could ruin the group's reputation. And so he pays that session singer $150,000

to not only stop talking about it, but to retract his statement. So that session singer goes publicly retracts his statement. And Robin Fabb end up in the clear again. In fact, in 1990, they win a Grammy for Best New Artist for a record they didn't even sing on. And here, when they're accepting the award, you can really hear their accents when they speak. We would like to thank Clive Davies.

And Jim, and we want to say I'm from West Germany, and this is symbol of freedom for East Germany and West Germany. And so it seems like these guys are just, gonna keep going and ride this thing out and make albums they don't sing on forever. Until. Now, Robin Fab are very famous at this point. But because of the embarrassing record skip incident and because that session singer claimed that he was the real singer on their album, they start to get publicly ridiculed a bit for not being able to sing.

Although at this point in the story, people are just making jokes. Like, no one knows if it's really true, if they really can't sing. But this starts to get to Robin Fab. And they're tired of people thinking that they're not real singers. And they aren't going to let this continue. No way. And so they go to their producer Frank. And they give him an ultimatum.

Let us sing on the next album or we quit. And Frank, he doesn't take this well. And he doesn't want them to sing on any album ever. He thinks their real singing voices are trash and won't sell. And so Frank's like, fuck you. And he straight up. fires them. Then, I guess to really be a jerk, he calls a press conference, and there he reveals that Millie Vanilli was all a scam and that Robin Fab have never sung on any of the songs ever.

And of course, this story blows up, and it's all over the news, and everyone's talking about it. And so Robin Fabb have to respond, and they immediately throw their own press conference, and to their credit, they own it. They're like, yeah, we didn't sing on the outside. album, but we were offered a bunch of money, so of course we did it for the paycheck. They also claimed that they were manipulated by Frank, but then to prove that they really can sing, they try. Girl, you know, it's true. I love you.

I'm in love with you, girl, because you're on my mind. You don't want to think of almost every time. But, unfortunately, none of that helps. Their record label immediately drops them, and some of their fans, and some of their fans, start filing lawsuits against the record label and they're asking for their money back for like concert tickets and albums that they had bought and to make it worse for Robin Fabb the Recording Academy the organization that gives out Grammys they officially take back the Grammy the guys had won for Best New Artist, which is the only time in history that that has ever happened and then later Robin Fabb try to make a comeback but it doesn't

really work because, you know, their reputations as artists are just completely destroyed. And eight years later, in 1998, Rob accidentally overdoses on alcohol and pills, and he, unfortunately, dies.