One critic’s view: “There are several songs on this list [of #1 hits of the 1980s] that should never have been a No. 1 hit. But Milli Vanilli’s ‘Girl I’m Gonna Miss You’ – with instrumentation a pre-teen could slap together on Garage Band – should never have been a song.” – Troy L. Smith @ Cleveland.com
The public’s view: 2.06 / 5.00, the fourth-worst #1 hit of 1989
When thinking about frauds today, many people are reminded of disgraced ex-Representative George Santos. The exposure of Santos’s fibs led to pearl-clutching gasps from the establishment, but as a congressman he was hardly any worse than average for his era. Sure, his proposal to make the AR-15 our National Gun didn’t go anywhere, but at least he was working on legislation while most of his colleagues were shutting the government down, fighting in the congressional ladies’ room, or threatening to impeach the president’s dog. Plus, we need to give Santos credit for sashaying through the glass ceiling that had prevented Brazilian drag queens from getting elected to high office for the first 246 years of U.S. history. Thanks to his trailblazing courage, I’m looking forward to voting for Senator Samba Tinsel Divine (R-Oklahoma) in the 2032 No Labels presidential primary.
Much like George Santos, Milli Vanilli was a fake but was otherwise a fairly inoffensive product of its times. If the ersatz singing duo had blasted onto the scene in 1983, there never would have been a scandal because its music was simply not interesting enough to make the charts in that awe-inspiring year. Thomas Dolby, Taco, and Spandau Ballet would have demolished “Baby Don’t Forget My Number” on MTV and at the record store. And if Milli Vanilli had emerged today, with Auto-Tune and A.I. deception everywhere, people would shrug and say “So what? I know they’re lip-synching, but so is the hamster in that funny clip I saw on TikTok.” A Milli Vanilli scandal could only have happened in 1989 and 1990, when the duo’s competition on the pop charts was weak but was still based on talent (or lack thereof) rather than trickery.
One of Milli Vanilli’s three #1 hits is now regarded as significantly worse than its late ‘80s peers. I am therefore legally obliged to mention it on this blog, due to a clause that was quietly inserted into the Naval Munitions Appropriations Act of 2023 by Rep. George Santos. But I’m not sure what I can write about “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You”, a track that has maybe one weak hook in the chorus and very little else of note. The verses aren’t melodic enough to qualify as singing, and not rhythmic enough to be considered rapping. There’s not even one-thousandth of a Vanilli on display here; maybe they should have renamed the group to Micro Vanilli for this song. Still, there’s nothing offensive, irritating, or unpleasant. I don’t remember having any kind of reaction either way when I first heard “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You”, or when Shadoe Stevens (Casey Kasem’s replacement) informed me that it had climbed to #1 on American Top 40.
Because there is so little to say about the song, I will summarize its accompanying video. In this clip, one of the Milli Vanilli guys is an artist who is dating the beautiful owner of an art gallery. He is supposed to make a painting of her, but when it is unveiled at a gala in front of all of her friends it turns out to be a rendition of a different woman. Worst. Gala. Ever. The clip ends with the artist wistfully looking back on the romance and burning the painting that triggered its demise. There’s also a sailboat, but it doesn’t get burned.
This video confuses me. Why did the artist sabotage his relationship, and why did he do it in such a vicious and publicly humiliating way? Did I miss a key plot point because I couldn’t tell the members of Milli Vanilli apart? I wish one of them had grown a mustache to make identification easier, like John Oates did so that people would stop mixing him up with Daryl Hall.
Perhaps this clip was intended to foreshadow Milli Vanilli’s fortunes in the coming year. Just as the girlfriend was shocked by the artist’s betrayal, the hunky young duo’s pre-teen fan-girls were about to discover that the voices they fell in love with belonged to a couple of not-so-hunky middle-aged men. And burning that painting was just the beginning of the physical destruction. Milli Vanilli would soon become the first chart-topping act to have a big pile of its tapes and CDs ceremonially crushed by a steamroller. What a way to bring in the 1990s!
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