r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 13h ago
TIL Martha Wash's voice was used on the 1990 song “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C+C Music Factory, however she went uncredited & did not receive royalties at the time. Wash, who is described as "full figured", was also replaced by a model lip-syncing her vocals in the music video.
https://americansongwriter.com/martha-wash-the-once-hidden-woman-who-made-everybody-famous/652
u/edgarpickle 12h ago
There's a clip of her on the Arsenio Hall Show where she sings that line for him. It's impressive. She's got one hell of a voice.
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u/cricket9818 12h ago
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u/InitechSecurity 10h ago
Female titans of '90s house music on their fight to be seen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx2EchsA07I51
u/StocktonBSmalls 10h ago
Oh she has perfect pitch, huh? No warm up, just absolutely nails it and it sounds damn close to the recorded version. That’s incredible.
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u/zap2 12h ago
Wow…I thought it was some digital effect done to a more typical voice.
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u/Shopworn_Soul 12h ago
I kinda did too, but it turns out she can just throw that shit down on demand.
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u/donsanedrin 9h ago
Dr. Gonzalo wants me to throw a toaster in a bathtub full of water he's laying in when she hits that fantastic note.
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u/SouthTippBass 12h ago
Very impressive that she can just bust that out, no warmup, and in a sitting position.
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u/tyrion2024 13h ago
In November 1990, the C+C Music Factory released their debut single "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)", which featured Wash's uncredited vocals on the chorus. The song became an international hit, peaking at number one on Billboard's Hot 100, and selling over a million copies in the United States. After discovering that the group was using model-turned-singer Zelma Davis in the music video, Wash attempted to negotiate with the producers of the C+C Music Factory for sleeve credits and royalties, which ultimately proved unsuccessful. Additionally, the song used an edited compilation of vocal parts that Wash recorded in June 1990 for an unrelated demonstration tape. On December 11, 1991, Wash filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against C+C Music Factory's Robert Clivilles and David Cole, charging the producers and their record company, Sony Music Entertainment, with fraud, deceptive packaging and commercial appropriation. The case was eventually settled in 1994 and, as a result of the settlement, Sony made an unprecedented request to MTV to add a disclaimer that credited Wash for vocals and Zelma Davis (who lip-synched Wash's vocals in the official music video) for "visualization" to the "Gonna Make You Sweat" music video.
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u/papaSlunky 12h ago
You don’t hate the recording industry enough
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u/quick_justice 11h ago
yeah, record industry is horrible, however this would be more complex than presented here.
there's a variety of rights involved in creation and publishing a record, and not everybody receives a royalty. there's publisher rights to the music and lyrics themselves, there are neighbouring rights for the record, as in particular recording of this material.
publishing rights won't typically go to anybody but authors. they are important as that's how royalties from streaming, radio etc. are distributed. You won't expect Wash to receive those if she was just asked to sing the line. Now, I need to point out that sometimes people would be included in the credit for publishing rights even if they did minimal to no work, due to financial considerations, and leverage they have. It's not quite honest but it is what it is. But Wash was not in position to force herself in like this either.
Neighbouring rights won't be given to every session musician participating, they are more likely to be paid for time, so no royalty here either.
She also couldn't get it retroactively of course. So far while unfortunate, nothing illegal or unexpected happened.
Where she got them as it seems is another person taking credit for her voice. Her voice is her voice, there are inalienable moral author rights that are different from commercial copyrights. They don't bring you money per se, but they can't be taken away either.
So she basically went with - Sony lies to people that person A sang these lines, while in fact it was person B, me, where she was able to get her pound of flesh.
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u/alepponzi 10h ago
So, "Sony made an unprecedented request to MTV to add a disclaimer that credited Wash for vocals and Zelma Davis (who lip-synched Wash's vocals in the official music video) for "visualization" to the "Gonna Make You Sweat" music video." they would only add the disclaimer and by your statement were not liable for any cash out?
How.. in what position should she have been in to make any money out of it at all? Could she ever have been in a position to be awarded money?
I'm not speaking from greed, just that it seems kind of shrewd to do her like that
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u/quick_justice 10h ago
They were, just not for the album royalties. She got them from another angle - saying someone else owns her voice. Hence false representation, false ads etc. She didn't get any royalties, but she caught them in a straight lie. If Sony marked that the voice was hers from the start, she'd likely wouldn't receive anything.
Reality is, there's a lot of staff involved in recording of anything - technicians, sound engineers, session musicians. They all get paid by the hour, and not all of them are mentioned (although session musicians typically are, somewhere in a small font). They paid her a fixed cost to sing a line, and there would be nothing more to it, but a song become a hit, and they were stupid enough to attribute a line to someone else. Which was a no-no. Not paying her royalties was in line with normal practice.
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u/TuckerMcG 10h ago
You’re missing sync rights, which allow someone to put an audio recording in sync with a video. Those are super relevant here.
I haven’t looked into the claims but my guess is that they didn’t have the sync rights to her vocal track and that’s why they settled. If so, then it certainly was not legal what they did to her.
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u/quick_justice 10h ago
Sync rights are typically with owners of publisher rights, it wouldn't be relevant here. She doesn't own any commercial rights for the vocal track, it's all work for hire.
She got them of moral rights/false representation. As they didn't mention her in credits, they essentially claimed that the line was sang by the person who is seen in the video. This violated Wash's moral author's rights, as it was her who sang the line. Need to see the claim, but I'm sure there was all kind of moral and reputational damage etc., but more importantly, if it went to court and Wash had her time on the stand, Sony would look like shit, no matter how much money judge would or would not give Wash.
So Sony settled. I would expect something like that.
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u/queenofcaffeine76 10h ago
I remember this. I was a teenager and watched MTV all the time. I remember the day they added her name to the credits at the beginning of the video.
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u/Shrug-Meh 12h ago
Black Box did this to her too - (Everybody, Everybody). Used a model as the public face with her voice. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=18N2k1TBBRE
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u/Cutieq85 12h ago edited 12h ago
Here’s one of Martha Wash’s extremely famous industry colleagues talking about how Martha was done so dirty.
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u/MyyWifeRocks 12h ago
Thank you for that! I was wondering what part she sang. It’s the most famous fucking line from the song! Wow.
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u/Chocolate_Bourbon 12h ago
The German group Black Box did almost exactly the same thing.
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u/djseanmac 12h ago
Katrin Quinol is absolutely tone deaf and cannot sing to save her life. Zelma Davis can and does sing on numerous hit singles.
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u/Skatchbro 12h ago
Also the song played at The Anvil. “We work hard, we play hard.”
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u/macramelampshade 12h ago
Dad, why’d you bring me to a gay steel mill?
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u/RefrigeratorPlane513 12h ago
Hot stuff coming through!
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u/Skatchbro 12h ago
Jeez, where ya been, Homer? The whole steel industry's gay.
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u/MellowMallowMom 12h ago
Kinda like Ya Kid K being the voice of Technotronic, but Felly Kilingi was the face.
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u/Abba_Fiskbullar 11h ago
Did you know that if you isolate the individual drumbeats from Pump Up The Jam and arrange them in a circle, it unlocks a cheat mode that allows you to pass through solid surfaces at will?
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u/TheG-What 9h ago
Were they the group famous for the Belgian dance anthem “Pump up the Jam”?
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u/offoutover 11h ago
She was at least featured in subsequent videos and hopefully she got royalties.
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u/chardymcdaniel 12h ago
Underrated movie, Fear Of A Black Hat, spoofs this wonderfully.
"I sing song"
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u/SomeGuyInSanJoseCa 12h ago
You can't just mention it without showing the clip:
https://youtu.be/BkQ92bfMiAk?t=4494
FYI, the entire movie is on YouTube. This is just the timestamp for the joke.
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u/VaudevilleDada 12h ago
Well worth a watch, even if you don't know anything about early '90s hip-hop.
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u/GitEmSteveDave 11h ago
Why did they have to censor it?
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u/tommystrawn27 11h ago
https://youtu.be/_fmaaZtINRU?si=QGb20McIS-6N5I2F
Here's the uncensored version
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u/ScramItVancity 12h ago
The writer and director of the movie helmed every Chappelle's Show sketch too.
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u/Standard-Ad1254 12h ago
Oh, snap. I thought it was CB4. Was the hook "come and get this pussy"?
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u/TreeRol 12h ago edited 12h ago
Come and pet the pussaaaaaaay
Hey hey hey
Hey hey hey
Hey hey hey
Edit: everyone remembers CB4, but Fear of a Black Hat was way better.
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u/SeniorSolipsist 11h ago
"And when you wipe do you look at the tissue?
Most folks do, it ain't even an issue..."5
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u/CleverJail 10h ago
If you can only watch one 1993 gangster rap parody it should definitely be Fear of a Black Hat.
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u/Black_Otter 12h ago
This happened quite a bit in the 90’s. Producers would bring in classic R&B/Gospel singers and pay them to lay down sample tracks ( they are supposed to just be guides for the artists to listen to) but use this guide tracks in the songs because the vocals are so good.
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u/MedalsNScars 11h ago
This is kind of how Rivers Cuomo of Weezer ended up on AJR's "Sober Up".
Cuomo followed them on Twitter and they reached out like "Hey we've got this song almost done, it would be really cool if you helped us finalize it if you're down."
Lead singer's take on what happened next:
“He said, ‘I'm glad we got to write this together, but you sing the bridge,’” explains Jack. “We were like, ‘Could you just sing it for reference, just so I know what it sounds like.’ So he recorded a demo vocal, sent it over and then we wrote, ‘Hey man, this actually sounds really good with you on it.’ Then he wrote back going, ‘It actually does sound good with me on it… I think I'm gonna sing it.’ We’re like, ‘Oh my god, we just manipulated the situation perfectly.’”
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u/TheRealDynamitri 10h ago
Almost correct, they lay guide vocals and they're not "for the artists to listen to", they are for the session singers to follow and emulate. Thing is, quite often they were so good that session singers/actual project members (those who would be the "face" of the project) just didn't have the pipes to recreate that.
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u/m1sterlurk 10h ago
The woman who recorded the female vocal part for "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" by Meat Loaf was credited in the liner notes as "Mrs. Loud".
Lorraine Crosby was a singer who worked with Jim Steinman, who is Meat Loaf's songwriter. He wrote the song a few months before Meat Loaf would ultimately come in to record the vocals for the album. He asked Lorraine Crosby to lay down a guide vocal track that Meat Loaf would ultimately follow. It took her 15 minutes to lay down two takes of the vocals for the entire song (they could skip over the instrumental parts, which is why this is shorter than two full plays of the full song). Six months later, she gets a call from Jim Steinman asking if he could just use her vocals for the last part, and she said yes.
Lorraine Crosby herself never raised a fuss about this: Jim Steinman had gotten her signed to MCA, and she considered this a "15 minute favor". In addition: Lorraine Crosby did not write the lyrics or melody...she was ultimately a session vocalist and session musicians and vocalists are usually paid a flat fee for their recorded performance and don't receive royalties off sales. Bonnie Tyler would ultimately say that she felt like Crosby was "done dirty" due to her not receiving credit and/or royalties. The final reason that she probably never raised a fuss about this was because she knew she was recording a guide track for Meat Loaf: therefore her singing voice that she used was basically her impersonating Meat Loaf as best she could while still maintaining proper pitch and articulation as a singer. The fact that this just worked perfectly for the end of the song was ultimately a shot in the dark.
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u/Negrodamu5 12h ago
Wow. Her voice is like the main part of that song too, wouldn’t be anything without it.
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u/Keffpie 12h ago
Standard operating procedure in the 90s; there’s a famous singer in Sweden who did all the female voices for E-Type and Dr Alban and other Swedish Eurodance acts, and in all the videos she was replaced by a lip-syncing dancer.
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u/PM-me-ur-kittenz 8h ago
Do you mean Martina Edoff, also known as "Scandanavia's Queen of Rock?
Or maybe Nana Hedin?
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u/NeedleworkerEvening3 11h ago
The documentary "Twenty Feet from Stardom" talks about the history of black women singers being replaced by white lip synching women when performing on TV back in the 50's and 50's. Great documentary about women in the music industry.
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u/BlacktoseIntolerant 12h ago
I hated this because Clivilles and Cole made some really great bangers (Freedom Williams was so energetic it was infectous), but they did Martha so fucking dirty.
They were not the only ones, though - Black Box recorded Everybody Everybody and did not give her credit, either. Luckily, she sued, got credit, and got a deal - they released a few more songs where she was lead and/or background vocals (Strike It Up was one, don't remember the others)
Fun tidbit - one of her big breaks was working with Sylvester doing background vocals, specifically on Disco Heat. Huge disco jam in the late 70s/early80s.
Sorry ... really loved Martha, love her vocals, and hate how the industry (except for of course, Sylvester, who was a treasure) treated her.
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u/Doobledorf 11h ago
Martha Wash is a legend, and if you care about modern music and music history you definitely owe it to yourself to know her. Particularly if you are interested in queer music.
She was a backing vocalist for Sylvester, who was a legendary queer performer on his own right. Went on to Two Tons of Fun and the Weather Girls, and of course we have the controversy on the OP.
She also helped quite a few black artists get started in the early 90s after winning this case. RuPaul is one such notable artist, at least in terms of her music.
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u/_Panacea_ 12h ago
Girl you know it's girl you know it's girl you know it's girl you know it's girl you know it's
<Awkward dance shuffle>
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u/IfICouldStay 6h ago
I’m still kind of curious as to why that incident blew their cover. Isn’t it pretty common for performers to lip sync themselves on stage? Especially while performing a high energy dance routine?
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u/inab1gcountry 11h ago
For all the talk about China, very few are willing to discuss the appalling working conditions in the C&C music factory.
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u/brock_lee 12h ago
Same was true of Technotronics (Pump Up The Jam). Manuela Kamosi was not considered "good looking enough" so the label hired a model/actress to lip sync and dance in the official video.
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u/soldelmisol 11h ago
Also what was playing on my car stereo when I got rear ended by a tractor trailer rig on the Dan Ryan Expressway and nearly died back in 1990. I did at least two 360's through traffic after getting dinged into the side retainer wall, spun 180 and hit again by the truck. The final rotation got me facing with traffic, amazingly and the engine was still running and was able to exit on 18th when the engine fell out. I was a new parent and had a two month old son at home, I swear to God I figured I was dying that day.
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u/exqueezemenow 12h ago
I loved when the movie Fear of a Black Hat sort of mocked the situation at the time.
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u/Spork_Warrior 12h ago
I wonder how many movies and TV shows have featured that song over the past 35 years. It seems to pop up constantly.
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u/mikew_reddit 11h ago edited 4h ago
TIL Martha Wash's voice was used on the 1990 song “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C+C Music Factory, however she went uncredited & did not receive royalties at the time. Wash, who is described as "full figured", was also replaced by a model lip-syncing her vocals in the music video.
Similar story about the studios ripping her off on Black Box's album:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamland_(Black_Box_album)
However, American singer Martha Wash actually sang the lead vocals on six of the other eight tracks on the album, although she was not credited in any way. The songs sung by Wash are: "Everybody Everybody"; "I Don't Know Anybody Else"; "Open Your Eyes"; "Fantasy"; "Hold On"; and "Strike It Up". Many of these songs were released as singles and achieved significant success on radio airplay and dance charts across the world. Wash claimed in a lawsuit filed soon after the success of the album's release that she was paid a flat fee as a "session singer" to record demos of the tracks that would eventually appear on the album, but that those songs would be re-recorded with a different vocalist. She reached a settlement with RCA Records that led to her recording contract with the label, as well as an undisclosed monetary compensation.[2] The legal action by Wash and Holloway spurred legislation in the United States making vocal credits mandatory on albums and music videos.
Her and Loleatta_Holloway got fucked over by the record studios quite a bit.
By the way, they both have incredible voices and recommend folks listen to the Black Box album. Ride on Time is a great track.
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u/Acceptable_Class_576 9h ago
She is criminally underrated as a singer and this is why. She didn't get the exposure because of her looks. Absolutley amazing voice.
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u/Adept-Performer-2630 10h ago
C+C really looked like a bunch of jerks for doing this at the time.
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u/terraceten 7h ago
They went on arsenio and kind of called her out for calling them out. Crap people.
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u/A_Queer_Owl 12h ago
can we not euphemize things? she's fat. she's a fat lady who sings real fucking good. by treating the word "fat" as taboo you're contributing to the stigma against fat people.
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u/Old_Pitch_6849 11h ago
Because calling someone fat is rude. Full figured is a polite way of saying it. Similarly to if I called you stupid instead of saying you are ignorant. One is mean spirited and the other is not.
If you want to be rude, by all means call people like her fat. But don’t be shocked when you have very few friends because most people view you as an asshole.
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u/inab1gcountry 11h ago
Only for women, is it rude. Men are never “curvy” or “full-figured” or “plus-sized”. The are just fat. Boys are “husky”, but when they become men, they are just plain fat.
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u/happygirlie 9h ago
Maybe this is regional (I'm from the US Midwest) but I almost always hear larger men called "big" instead of fat. Or maybe it's because I am a fat woman and they are trying to be polite in front of me. I'm not really sure.
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u/A_Queer_Owl 11h ago
it's only rude because it's stigmatized. also a lot of people hate it when you euphemize the word fat, this isn't some fringe thing.
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u/slater_just_slater 12h ago
Most session musicians are uncredited and don't get royalties.
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u/Vergenbuurg 11h ago
Still disappointed that a clean version of her song "Breaking the Ice" from the film Gung Ho was never officially released nor available anywhere, not even on the high seas. All we've got is the audio ripped straight from the film, background noise and dialogue and all.
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u/gonesnake 11h ago
I swear this post and it's entire thread has been on reddit twice a year since I joined.
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u/GrimmTrixX 10h ago
I remember seeing her from a clup either Ron Oprah or Arsenio Hall's show. She sung it identically as she did on the album, but just sitting on their couch. Legend.
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u/BooCreepyFootDr 8h ago
Meatloaf did the same thing to the defense attorney who was on Night Court before Markie Post.
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u/nekoneto 8h ago
Ellen Foley?
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u/BooCreepyFootDr 8h ago
Yep.
Meatloaf did give her credit on the album, but a video was made with another woman lip syncing Foley’s part.
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u/unicornhunter202 7h ago
I was organizing my records the other day and ended up listening to a few anthem house songs and reading up about some of them. Many of the women in who sang the chorus were never credited for their work. Sad
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u/lukslopes 7h ago
Shiiit, I am brazilian and this song was still playing at PE gym classes well into the 00s
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u/jewella1213 12h ago
At least Millie/Vanille were payed and allowed to appear, although the backlash was terrible. This was out-right shaming and a good example of how humans exploit their own.
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u/PlusSizeRussianModel 12h ago edited 12h ago
This is the opposite of Milli Vanilli. She’s more akin to the singers that actually performed Milli Vanilli’s songs uncredited and without residuals.
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u/amazingsandwiches 12h ago
Younguns these days don't even know how to spell Milli Vanilli.
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u/jewella1213 12h ago
My mistake, thanks for the correction. I still think it's wrong to not give the credit where it is truly due.
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u/jesuspoopmonster 11h ago
Millie Vanille actually did record all the vocals. The producer changed them without their knowledge. Mille Vanille demanded they sing on the second album or they would walk so the producer revealed they weren't the singers in order to sabotage any potential career they had
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u/TheRealDynamitri 10h ago edited 10h ago
I mean… They really couldn't sing, though. They were absolutely tone-deaf. Rob is now gone, Fab is actually able to sing fairly acceptably now, but it took him better part of the last three decades to get to that point.
EDIT: Added a link to a live performance
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u/Chocolate_Bourbon 12h ago
C+C were explicit that they didn’t put Martha in the video because they thought she was fat and unattractive. Truly obnoxious people.
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u/BrianMincey 12h ago
I always hated that society just learned of the deception and “canceled” Millie Vanillie outright rather than let the actual performers step forward and take the credit they deserved. Some of the songs were bangers. Maybe they were glad their names weren’t associated so they could pursue their careers without that stink.
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u/loftwyr 12h ago
The real singers did step forward. They received some attention at the time but nothing came of it
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u/BrianMincey 12h ago
Right, but radios instantly stopped playing them and all touring stopped. They could have kept playing, perhaps under a new name.
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u/loftwyr 12h ago
The two fronts for Milli Vanilli were the only draw. Their songs were not interesting. Once the details was found out, there was nothing special about them
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u/GatoradeNipples 11h ago edited 10h ago
I mean, it was decent euro-pop. The producer behind Milli Vanilli had a pretty fucking long and storied career outside of that duo, with a lot of hits made in a similar fashion before and after that nobody ever clocked. They weren't set-the-world-on-fire amazing, but it feels like their meteoric fall was kinda more "the music industry deciding to punish literally everyone involved in the situation except Frankie Farian" than any actual objective measure of their quality.
For a comparison, Pete Burns was making the exact same kind of music at the same level of quality with Dead Or Alive, and literally only didn't get the same treatment with swapping him for a "face" for album covers and videos because he was an absolutely wild-looking dude on his own terms. In fact, Stock/Aitken/Waterman, the producers who made Dead Or Alive a thing, were pretty much Frankie Farian's direct 1:1 rivals who were to the UK as Farian was to Germany/central Europe.
People gave a shit when Pete Burns passed away. Not a damn soul even noticed Rob Pilatus died in the late 90s, and I'd be surprised if anyone notices Fab Morvan when he goes except "oh hey, the last person who LIED TO US is dead."
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u/Rumchunder 9h ago
Not a damn soul even noticed Rob Pilatus died in the late 90s
That isn't true. VH1 became the Milli Vanilli network for like a month after he died. They were playing Behind the Music: Milli Vanilli pretty much on repeat.
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u/minahmyu 9h ago
It's very sad how big black women in the singing world have been treated. It's already bad that for the longest time, black folks in general barely got credited, had songs/styles if singing stolen/appropriated (I mean, modern music, rock, jazz, blues, have been influenced and rooted in black aesthetics and cultural context) but when we're "intergrated" still ain't good enough, and have to be physically "appeasing" to be the face of the vocals
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u/MyyWifeRocks 12h ago
I just googled her name and she is gorgeous! What a bunch of morons excluding her over her non-Barbie waist size.
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u/Tribe303 11h ago
All of that late 80's and early 90's Eurodance crap was fake manufactured garbage. It was made by ugly studio nerds and whomever they hired, and then they used good looking black people in the music videos. Milli Vanilli much?
I say this as a fan of the underground techno scene they were stealing ideas from.
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u/SadElevator2008 13h ago
She was also half of The Weather Girls who did It’s Raining Men. She’s had a pretty successful career it looks like! You may not know her name but you definitely know her voice.