Vanilli Is My Favorite Ice Cream

I’m going to say this out loud, and when you have finished either laughing or rolling your eyes, you can continue to read if you choose to.

I liked Milli Vanilli.

Their record, GIRL YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE produced five top 10 songs, and I knew the words to all of them.

It was fun, slickly produced pop music, and it was popular. Hey, it even won a Grammy: Best New Artist In 1990.

For anyone needing a little background, Millie Vanilli was the project of a German record producer who hired a couple of good-looking dudes to be the face of his music.

Rob and Fab.

But the public face is all they were. They did not sing a note on the album and when they performed in concert, it was lip syncing.

The scheme fell apart fairly quickly when it was discovered that Rob and Fab were nothing but pretty faces.

The Grammy was revoked, and their record company removed the album from its catalog.

Those are events I still don’t understand to this day.

If I’m a record company with an album that spends eight weeks at the #1 spot, I’m keeping that sucker around for all eternity.

And the Grammy was awarded because the music was good, wasn’t it?

So what if you find out the pretty boys you thought were singing it were not. That doesn’t change the music.

If I am the Grammy god, I’m reinstating the award!

As you might expect, multiple lawsuits were filed.

I recall one of the lawsuits was filed by a lawyer who claimed his 8-year-old daughter was defrauded. His 8-year-old daughter probably could not spell the word ‘defrauded’ and may not have even known her daddy was an attorney.

Such is the nature of lawyers. Millie Vanilli was an ambulance that needed chasing.

After they were exposed, Rob and Fab recorded an album on which they were the actual singers. It was a colossal failure.

Several years later, Rob would no longer be with us after failing to overcome some drug problems. And Fab simply faded into the background.

And that brings us to where we are today.

America is on the verge of a 250th birthday celebration. A huge concert was planned. Fab Morvan was to be one of the performers.

It is likely that you know by now most of the performers have pulled out of the show, often citing politics as the reason.

I’m not so sure about that, though. My guess is that once they found out they were sharing the billing with such pop royalty as one half of Millie Vanilli they reconsidered the value of the show to their careers.

Fab, however, is still willing.

But that brings us to our grand prize question: what does one half of a 37 year-old lip syncing duo do for a performance?

I suppose you could walk out on stage and announce, “Hey y’all, somebody backstage is going to drop the needle on our record. Everybody feel free to dance and lip sync along!”

If I were in the audience, I’d do that!

Footnote: I spent a few hours on this only to learn that Fab pulled out of the 250 Celebration the day I was going to publish it. Oh, well.