Remember when Ashlee Simpson got caught lip-syncing on SNL back in 2004? How about Mariah Carey’s vocal malfunction on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in 2016? There are countless more examples of pop stars getting caught faking it during live performances. But few incidents are as infamous and awkward as one of the first instances of a lip-synced performance going very wrong. And that very incident happened on this day in 1989 to the German R&B group Milli Vanilli.
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Sadly for this group, the accusations of regular lip-syncing first started with this very incident. It led to quite a bit of media backlash. And, eventually, they broke up because of it.
Milli Vanilli’s Performance in Bristol, Connecticut Went Sour After the Duo Was Caught Lip-Syncing
This lip-syncing debacle is probably the most famous and controversial incident of its kind in pop music history. Honestly, I can’t help but feel a little bad for the duo of Rob and Fab. They first shot to international fame with the release of the hit “Girl You Know It’s True”. It seemed like they would be the next big musical act.
The story goes that the duo appeared for an interview with MTV in 1989. With their thick accents, quite a few people in attendance questioned whether or not the group actually sang on their own tracks. They sounded very different in person.
That was just the beginning. In July of that year, the Club MTV Tour kicked off with quite a bit of talent on the bill, from Paula Abdul to Information Society to Milli Vanilli. On this very day in 1989, during a live performance on the tour at Lake Compounce Park in Bristol, Connecticut, Milli Vanilli performed. But things didn’t go as planned.
When the duo took to the stage to perform “Girl You Know It’s True”, a hard drive malfunction occurred and caused the song to skip. And, of course, the part of the song that skipped was the vocal track, which the group was planning on lip-syncing to. To add insult to injury, one vocal line skipped and repeated over and over again. The duo of Milli Vanilli stood on stage, dumbfounded, before running off in a state of panic.
The incident has been blown up in the years since. However, at the time, the audience didn’t really seem to care that much. But more drama soon followed.
On the international version of the group’s album All Or Nothing, both Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus were credited as the vocalists. A singer named Charles Shaw revealed to the public that he was one of the vocalists on the album. And he said that Milli Vanilli didn’t sing at all.
Public criticism flew around, Milli Vanilli became the butt of late-night talk show jokes, and Pilatus would later confirm that “Milli Vanilli didn’t sing.” Their career as a duo would be more or less over in 1990.
Photo by Franz-Peter Tschauner/picture alliance via Getty Images
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