Pages

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

"Baby Don't Forget My Number" by Milli Vanilli

#1 Alert!
Gold Record Alert!
Song#:  3881
Date:  04/29/1989
Debut:  62
Peak:  1 (1 week)
Weeks:  21
Genre:  Dance-Pop, New Jack Swing


Pop Bits:  This duo of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus found themselves getting an unexpected #2 platinum-selling hit with "Girl You Know It's True." Their associated album by the same name would be released and quickly go gold. For a follow-up single, this next track was selected. This time around, the duo were able to make it all the way to #1 on the Pop chart. The song would also get to #9 R&B and #10 Dance. As the single peaked, the album would find a home in the Top 10 and would reach the platinum sales level. It was quite the one-two punch, but there was a lot more to come.

ReduxReview:  I liked "Girl You Know It's True" and even bought the single, but when this came out I wasn't having it. I didn't connect with the song at all. Frankly, I thought it was a stupid track and I immediately lost interest in Milli Vanilli. These days, the tune kind of has a bit of a goofy charm. The chorus is quite hooky and Frank Farian's production was nicely detailed. It was kind of a kitchen sink track with various catchy melodies, a bit of rap, and some ba-ba-ba-ba-ba's tossed in for good measure. It's nothing I'd get a craving to hear, but I can listen to it these days without wanting to roll my eyes and hit the skip button.

ReduxRating:  6/10

Trivia:  This song was written by Milli Vanilli mastermind Frank Farian and Brad Nail. Nail is actually Texas-born singer/keyboardist Brad Howell. Howell learned the keyboard early on and spent time in the 60s playing around the Washington D.C. area. It was there that he was invited to play in Wilson Pickett's band on a European tour. This was around 1966 and it seems Howell liked Europe enough to stick around. In the mid 70s, Howell ended up in a Germany-based disco outfit called Chilly. They were the assembled product of producer Bernt Möhrle. He'd get them signed to Polydor and in 1978 a debut album titled For Your Love was released. It featured the title track cover of the 1965 #6 hit by The Yardbirds. The single would get to #38 on the US Dance chart in 1979. Chilly would record four albums that performed fairly well around Europe and spawned a few club hits. The group would disband sometime around '84. At some point in time, Howell crossed paths with songwriter/producer Frank Farian. The pair would write a couple songs and Howell would provide vocals on the tracks along with another American singer John Davis. While the songs they recorded hit the mark for Farian, he didn't consider the pair marketable. Howell was in his mid-40s at the time and Davis in his 30s. So Farian decided to keep the tracks and vocals as recorded and got two other young model-esque guys to be the faces of the duo. That's when Morvan and Pilatus came on board and the strange saga of Milli Vanilli began.

_________________________________________________________________________________

No comments:

Post a Comment