The Milli Vanilli story always brings up the ghosts of The Monkees, arguably the first pre-fab pop band. And I mean “pre-fab” as in fabrication, not in “fab four”. The four Monkees all sang on their records but had professional song writers write their hits and studio musicians play on the tracks. As far as the studio musicians go, so did the Beach Boys, the Byrds and many other “singing groups” back then. Even more do it now though, but back then after the Beatles bands were suppose to write their own material and play on the records themselves. The Monkees were a television series about a band and I didn’t expect them to make their own records any more than I expected Sean Connery as James Bond to do his own stunts. In “art” it is the final result that counts, not the process. I liked and still like, the Monkees’ records. They , the powers that be behind the show such as Don Kirshner, understood the appealing elements of the hit music of the times and were able to distill those elements into records that could compete with the current hits and not just parody them as Spinal Tap does. I also love Spinal Tap and just don’t care where the sounds come from, or why, or from whom, but only how they sound.
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