Anyone who'd seen Milli Vanilli perform live probably suspected something was up, but it was a disastrous MTV performance in early 1989 that sealed it. The guys were lip-syncing their hearts out to "Girl You Know It's True," bless 'em, when the backing track started skipping and repeating "girl you know it's girl you know it's" over and over again, like some kind of purgatorial pop-cheese nightmare. The seeds of doubt were definitively sown, watered, and in full bloom.
Scrutiny mounted, pitchforks were polished, and on November 14, Rob, Fab, and manager Frank Farian conceded it had all been a ruse, according to the New York Times. They were stripped of their Grammy a few days later. Rob and Fab wanted to give the award to the real singers, and claimed they'd been duped by Farian. Poor, hungry, and eager to prove themselves when the producer first encountered them in Berlin, apparently he promised them they could use their own voices on future albums and tours if they kept those lips syncing dutifully for a while. They went along with it, but he went back on his word. They also said their record label, Arista, knew about it the whole time, a claim Arista vehemently denied.
As far as most were concerned, Milli Vanilli was done. But for anyone who was still listening, a surprisingly complex and engaging story of two naive but sympathetic wannabe stars and the mildly Machiavellian producer pulling their strings was just starting to emerge.
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