Frank Farian Dead at 82

(Newsworthy.news) – Milli Vanilli’s creator, Frank Farian, died at 82. On Tuesday, the German producer’s agency confirmed that Farian had passed away quietly at his Miami home.

His exact cause of death was not immediately disclosed, but according to Farian, he had recently undergone surgery to replace his heart valve. He revealed he had a pig heart valve replacement in 2022, claiming it had saved his life.

In Kirn, Germany, on July 18, 1941, Franz Reuther came into this world. Hertha and Heinz, Franz’s elder brothers, were brought up by their schoolteacher mother after their father, a former furrier turned soldier, was slain during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

After growing up listening to American rock ‘n’ roll songs nonstop, Mr. Farian decided to pursue a music career. In 1976, he soared to the top of the West German charts with his energetic cover of “Rocky” by American country singer Dickey Lee, performed in German.

Enter Milli Vanilli, two telegenic performers who could wear a glittering stage outfit and dance. They weren’t singers, but it wasn’t required for the songs that brought them fame.

They had an audition with Mr. Farian, a top record producer in Germany in the late ’80s, after making a little money singing cover songs at nightclubs. Even though they looked great on video, Mr. Farian thought their singing was terrible and gave them an awful rating for their short performance.

The pseudo-pop stars wowed crowds around the globe with their squeal-inducing dance moves and mouthed vocals of other artists’ songs from their 1989 smash album, “Girl You Know It’s True,” which had three number-one singles in the US and had sold over 10 million copies by early 1990.

The taped voice track started skipping, repeating the sentence “Girl, you know it’s…” and sending a visibly distressed duo rushing off stage during Milli Vanilli’s July 1989 show in Bristol, Connecticut.

After the act won a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1990, things began to fall apart, and the inner workings of this pop machine that had sold platinum records began to be examined more closely.

One of the biggest punchlines in pop music was the notorious act Farian had created.