Beginnings
When Frank Farian developed the concept of Milli Vanilli, he chose to feature vocals by Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howell, and twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco; however, he felt that those singers lacked a marketable image. He then recruited Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, two younger model/dancers he found dancing in a Munich dance club, to front the act.
In 2011, Morvan and Kim Marlowe, the band's former manager, claimed that Farian manipulated the two by giving them a large advance when he signed them. The pair spent most of it on clothes and hairstyling, then several months later Farian called them back and told them they had to lip sync to the prerecorded music or, per the contract, repay the advance in full. "We were not hired, we were trapped," Morvan recalled.
Milli Vanilli's debut album All or Nothing was released in Europe in mid-1988, with Rob and Fab's pictures on the front and center of the albums, but no mention of who actually sang the songs. The success of the record caught the attention of Arista Records who signed the duo. Arista deleted several tracks from the original album, added several new ones (including a new track written by Diane Warren, "Blame It on the Rain"), remixed many of the tracks and renamed the album to Girl You Know It's True for release in the American market in early 1989.
This version of the album went six times platinum and led to the re-release of the title track, which peaked at number 2 on the Hot 100 in April of that year and was certified platinum. (The song was a cover version of a Numarx track published in 1987 on the US Bluebird label.) The U.K. release featured the original first album and the remix album together as "2 X 2". Even greater commercial success followed, as the pair's next three singles "Baby Don't Forget My Number", "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" and "Blame It on the Rain" all reached number 1. A fifth and final single "All or Nothing", also made the Top 5 in the beginning of 1990 in a remixed form which sampled the "Keep On Movin'" beat from UK soul act Soul II Soul. Milli Vanilli's meteoric rise to pop music superstardom culminated with a Grammy Award for Best New Artist on February 22, 1990.
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