Milli Vanilli

I think I've written about Milli Vanilli before. With that in mind I think one thing that is completely under appreciated about Milli Vanilli, is how if a group was caught today in the same fashion that Vanilli was a couple decades ago, it would be madness.

The rise of the gossip blog, increased coverage of every facet of pop culture, and overall media saturation of such an event would be insane. The fact that they won a Grammy for Best New Artist is the cherry on the top of the insanity of the situation. The VH1 'Behind the Music' episode did a very good job of encapsulating how crazy and simultaneously terrible this story was. In another really fucking weird twist is that several lawsuits were brought forward and it was ultimately decided that anyone who purchased Vanilli concert tickets or albums would be eligible for some sort of monetary refund. The entire situation is kind of hilarious in a weird way. Although the legal grounds for such a lawsuit puzzle me. I suppose the people who went to a concert were being defrauded because they weren't actually being performed for, but in a way they were. Was the entertainment that night any less real for the concert goers? It's a similar argument when people talk about steroid use in baseball. You can't ignore that these games took place when people were taking steroids, so to act as though they never occurred is a bit disingenuous.

Yes Fab and Rob were partially to blame for being complicit in the lie, but the fallout of the entire incident was clearly heaped on them. This of course ignores everyone within the recording industry ladder that was complicit in the lie. Ultimately Rob Pilatus, one half of Milli Vanilli ended up killing himself in what was labeled an accidental overdose.