Milli Vanillism: The day the music lied

BY Jamie Cooke

My dad used to tell me that what defines a generation is its music. Though I later saw this in a TV advertisement for soft drink, I still believed it.

He told me that there were a few moments in any decade that characterised how it would sound. If it weren’t for US prohibition people would never have experienced jazz. If it weren’t for Vietnam there’d be no Jimi and no Dylan.

He told me that music could induce and reflect revolutionary ideas or complacency, blind optimism or misguided cynicism.

If my dad was right, and his philosophising wasn’t only the result of beer and late night TV, then a generation is defined by its music and there is a moment for each and every decade. For him it’s American Bandstand and public disgust over gyrating hips. It’s Jimi’s flaming guitar and the Beatles being “bigger than Jesus”. It’s protest songs, three-day festivals and biker riots at Stones concerts.

For you and me on the other hand, for that unimaginatively named Y that falls just after the Xes and just before the ‘tweens’, the defining moment of our generation is probably not ripped jeans and post-80s angst thrashed out in a garage somewhere, despite popular misconception. Nor, thank God, is it divas belting out Dolly Parton covers, pre-coke induced ‘fatigue’, fists clenched and bodies doubled over with the emotional anguish of it all.

No. If you were to choose one, and only one moment that moulded our generation, shaped our thinking, our expectations and the way we see the world, it’d probably be two male models miming badly, all pouty lips and rippling chests, braids glinting in that decidedly golden after-Grammies glow.

Yep. That’s right. The defining moment of our generation, whether you like it or not and no matter which way you shape it, is Milli Vanilli.

Aahhh. I can hear the collective screams of protest already. Sorry.

As horrifying and disturbing as this legacy is, we’re stuck with it. You see, this is the moment that catalysed the total and absolute fabrication of popular music.

Think about it. True, before Milli Vanilli we had our Monkees and our Partridge Family, but we also had our Diana Rosses and our Princes… some absolute and undeniable talent to even the score. And since? Music has increasingly become a popularity contest. Never before has it been so reliant on the right handbag, the right boyfriend, the right fake tan.

Even those who were once the epitome of talent and popularity are mere shadows of their former selves. Faded to whiter shades of pale, destined to become this generation’s freaks and sell-outs. Faking marriages, befriending monkeys, flagging down the paparazzi with Kabbalah strings and yogalates.

Sure, Milli Vanilli wasn’t exactly musical genius. The vocals were a little bland, the synthed 80s beats devoid of any non-computer-generated creativity and the lyrical brilliance of “Girl You Know It’s True” could be held directly responsible for Peter Andre. But therein lies the logic. When all else fails, when you can’t rely on talent or creativity or even production value – bring in a couple of braided Fabio-esque male models, take their shirts off, lube ‘em up and stick ‘em in the rain. Then play that not-totally-great-but-it’ll-do track in the background.

And ta-dah! Three AMAs, a Grammy and an international music career later, what does it matter that none of it was real? After all, it takes guts to counterfeit an entire identity in the name of success and, probably more importantly, dirty, filthy money. Haven’t you ever heard of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’? [Ed: If not, kindly check out Claire Wiltshire’s excellent story on the subject in this issue.] What about ‘go hard or go home’? Milli Vanilli is the base-jumping of lying on your resume, and Rob and Fab deserve our respect for that.

The saddest part is that the precedent they set back in the Milli Vanilli days has now become the rule. Collectively we are no longer outraged by the sham and drudgery of the music world; it’s expected. As long as it comes packaged complete with Anthony Callea action figures and guest spots on reality TV, all is, unfortunately, as it should be.

But let’s not let it get away that easily. Let’s analyse this like the good little Freudians we are. Is it really any wonder that we now require our music with a liberal dose of botox and bling, not unlike the MSG that gives your General Tao’s Chicken that fantastic orange sheen? In a world where politics is based on brand identity, feminism requires that women at least pretend they like porn, and our cultural heroes are drink drivers, infidels and promoters of general thuggery, is it at all surprising that collectively we’re craving all of the gloss and none of the substance?

If we can accept the wars and their subsequent election campaigns that are run not by governments but by PR firms, if we can accept the 18-year-old gay-hipster-boy literary darlings that turn out to be mousy middle-aged straight women named Laura [Ed: and on that note, why not take in Jackie Wykes’s thoughtful analysis of that very topic in this issue?], and we can accept the ‘food’ that has been bleached of all its nutritional goodness only to pay $2 extra for it to be ‘enhanced’ with something they stripped from it in the first place, then what harm is a little escapism via ear candy?

Can you and I really be held accountable, nay, blamed? If not for video-game wars and mousy-gay-hipster-middle-aged-Lauras, then at least for the fact that an animated frog making revving sounds, or a talentless hotel-empire heiress, can occupy the coveted number-one-sounds-good position? Or does that liability rest in the clammy hands of bureaucracy? Can we blame some fake-tanned, slippery skinned man in Ermenegildo Zegna and alligator skin shoes? Are we merely passive vessels that feeding on those morsels of three-minute sugary goodness that are thrown into the pit?

Seriously. Would we actually recognise unadulterated musical talent if we came across it in a dark alleyway any more? If it stood in front of us in the rain getting its feet wet, strumming our pain with its fingers and singing with its eyes closed, would we, could we dust off our tambourines and our triangles, close our eyes and sway along with it? Faced with the choice between music in all its buck-toothed, fluffy haired, pale, acne-faced honesty, and its cocoa-buttered and bikinied counterpart, are we simply peeing our pants in fear and shakily handing over our $1.70 to the wailing, snorting, gyrating pop-monster?

Perhaps I’m wrong and there’s nothing new here; maybe fallacy was always part of the pop world – necessary, even. Perhaps that’s the very element that defines it. But if Milli Vanilli gave us anything, anything at all, it was the realisation that we want to be lied to. It’s expected. Hell, we even lie to ourselves when there’s no one there to do it for us. We’d probably laugh in the face of musical honesty and tell it to come back when it’s lost some weight, waxed its legs and invested in some botox. The entire audition process of Australian Idol is a case in point.

So what does it take to keep you, and yes I’ll admit it me, complacent? Perhaps the more songs there are about “lovely lady lumps” the easier it becomes to accept them? Maybe if it is accepted, tolerated, ignored even, it’ll be easier to forget? Or won’t have happened at all?

And how far will we let it go? For how long can we tolerate the hijacking of our once legitimate musicians by cardboard cutouts holding disconnected microphones?

Take Snoop Dogg for example. Once a hip-hop doyen, now a darling of the pop world, since when did it become acceptable for the muthabeeping DO-double-G to go from Dre to JT? Sure we allowed the Pharrell thing. That was cool; the guy has a tattoo on his neck for godsake. But Justin Timberlake? The Bee Gees? The Pussy Cat Dolls? When exactly did this happen?

Sure, the musical credibility of Snoop himself is, has always been, debatable. But how does a weed smoking, gun toting, misogynist gangsta pimp go from MF-ing at every opportunity to mainstream? Don’t get me wrong, I like Snoop, and I’m no purist, but when did music itself start playing second fiddle to the image, the product placement, the braids and the pretty coloured lights? Is anyone else disturbed by this?

Here’s the point, people, the million dollar tax-free goodie bag question: am I contributing by simply turning the other way? When I sit down with my toast to watch Video Hits and find that instead of turning it off I have to close my eyes so tight I see spots, stick my fingers in my ears and sing la la la, does that make me an accomplice, guilty as sin, or just another innocent bystander? Is there some grey area, some moral book of rules that’ll tell me where their untruths stop and mine begin? Is my complacency, my iron-tight grip on my Snoop Dogg delusions, that inability to let him slip into the shiny, siliconey, pop music celebrity ether that he probably inhabited all along… is that just another glossy cog in the greased up mainstream music machine?

My thinking on this is: “yes, yes it is.”

So in the face of this devastating realisation, short of wailing into my tea and pounding the floor to the beat of some lame John Farnham track left over from the 80s and repackaged as ‘Divas’, I ask you, what would it take to redeem myself? What is it I’d do exactly to make it better? Would I scream in the street? Stand up and yell in the cinema? Holler out the window perhaps? Make a fuss in the supermarket? No, no, probably not. No, it’s likely that instead I would embrace the gooey pop sensibility and ridiculous duets, slap it around in a vat of irony and churn out some absurd premise that would justify all, say for example, “Milli Vanilli is the defining musical moment of our generation”.

The simple fact is, once you admit that everything, on your radio, in your newspaper, in your classroom and yes in this very article, is at least, at an absolute minimum, 40% bullshit, it will set you free. Go ahead try it. You can’t take anything one hundred percent literally anymore anyway. It’s quite likely you never could. There is always some creative license, always some legal loophole, always a collective forgetting.

So, failing all else, the time has come at long last to stand up and own it, people. We’ve reached that divine state of human evolution where finally we can, as Dr Phil would put it, accept our ‘authentic selves’ and embrace the forefathers of this, the Milli Vanilli generation. So be brave and say it with me: Yes, Snoop kinda sucks now and I don’t really think Paris Hilton can sing, just because she has a lot of money and a sex video doesn’t mean she should get a pop career, but I like the film clip ‘cos I’d rather be at the beach and that Snoop song somehow calms me down in the elevator.”

Ahh, now doesn’t that feel better?