For fans of pop music with integrity, the pop charts of 1989 were a desolate place. Between an avalanche of soul-sapping covers (Michael Damian, Michael Bolton, Martika), the blatant New Edition ripoff that was New Kids on the Block, and Paula Abdul dancing with a frickin’ animated cat … well, it was a tough year for those of us who had been raised on pop’s true originals, from Elvis and Pat Boone to the Monkees and the Archies.

How refreshing, then, that the biggest-selling band of 1989 was all about the music, not the image. Milli Vanilli sold 6 million albums and 4 million singles with an innovative blend of R&B and hip-hop that served as a template for the pop music of the ’90s. Best of all, the group resisted the movement toward video-friendly prettiness and vapid dance moves that characterized so much late-’80s pop.

Indeed, it’s a mark of Milli Vanilli’s trend-bucking pursuit of substance that, for months, record buyers gobbled up the band’s debut album Girl You Know It’s True without even once seeing the singers’ faces.

Milli Vanilli began in the fertile mind of German uber-producer Frank Farian, who previously had concocted the funky reggae-disco of Boney M in 1978 before hatching the brilliant idea of joining the musical genius of Toto with the iconic grandeur of Led Zeppelin – the result, of course, being Far Corporation’s 1986 classic “Stairway to Heaven.”

Two years later, armed with a new vision of an R&B/rap hybrid that could take over the pop charts, Farian assembled a crack lineup of expatriate-American vocalists in his studio outside Frankfurt. He named his new act Milli Vanilli, and later claimed the phrase meant “positive energy” in Turkish. (In fact, the phrase translates directly as “National Vanilli.”) Forsaking glamour in his search for the ideal marriage of voices and songs — he even released the group’s album in a plain black-and-white sleeve, to preserve an air of mystique — Farian emerged with an irresistible sound that dominated first the European charts, and then American pop radio for much of 1989.

Milli Vanilli’s initial recordings were released on a small independent label in Europe, which laid the groundwork for the band’s success by securing a dancefloor hit, “All or Nothing,” in 1988. It was their second single, however, that broke the European market open and captured the attention of American labels. “Girl You Know It’s True” was a cover version of a modest European club hit of a couple years before, by the group Numarx. (The song was co-written by Numarx’s leader, Bill Pettaway, who eventually was able to quit his job as a gas-station attendant and parlay his Milli money into a career as a session guitarist for Justin Timberlake, Missy Elliott and others.) (more…)