Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Yes, even you could 'sing'

By GINA VIVINETTO
Published November 9, 2004

Sometimes stars don't even lip-synch to their own voices. Here are a few infamous cases:

&* Milli Vanilli was a prefabricated duo concocted by German producer Frank Farian, who hired hunky models Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan to pose as singers and go around the world lip-synching to the supercatchy Girl You Know It's True and Blame It on the Rain. The duo won the Best New Artist Grammy in 1990, but it was stripped from them when it was revealed neither sang a note on their album, which sold roughly 10-million copies.

But most anyone paying attention could have figured out what was happening, even before a flawed tape famously revealed the secret during a show at Radio City Music Hall: both spoke English with strong accents that somehow disappeared when they "sang," and they were never even particularly good lip-synchers.

* Pump Up The Jam, that terrific dance track by Technotronic, wasn't really sung by Felly, the beautiful Zairean model featured on the album's cover and lip-synching in the group's videos. It was sung by Ya Kid K, the tiny tomboy rapper. Felly didn't even speak English; she had to learn the words phonetically.

One of Paula Abdul's backup singers claimed that she did so much singing on Abdul's Forever Your Girl album, you could barely hear Abdul.

* Black Box's video for the dance club hit Everybody, Everybody featured a thin Italian "singing" tracks that were laid down by full-figured soul sister Martha Wash of the Weathergirls.

* In 1962, famed producer Phil Spector hired singer Darlene Love and members of the Blossoms to "ghost record" the vocals to the Crystals' He's A Rebel. It became the Crystals' biggest hit, though they didn't sing a note of it.

[Last modified November 9, 2004, 11:52:06]