Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus of Milli Vanilli were big stars in the late 1980s, around the time the Menendez brothers killed their parents.
Michael Putland / Getty Images / Netflix
Milli Vanilli is the latest act to get a streaming boost from a Netflix show. Three songs by the German pop duo feature in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”Kate Bush and The Cramps have also had songs revived by Netflix shows.
Milli Vanilli is the latest act to get a second wind with younger generations thanks to Netflix.
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” topped the streamer’s most-watched charts for two weeks after it was released last month, and featured three of Milli Vanilli’s biggest songs in the first episode: “Blame It on the Rain,” “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You,” and “Girl You Know It’s True.”
The band, featuring Fab Morvan and and the late Rob Pilatus, was huge in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but became a laughing stock after their creator revealed the pair lipsynced to songs recorded by other vocalists.
But they’ve made a comeback thanks to “Monsters”: The three songs featured on the show got a boost in streaming numbers, Billboard reported, with “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” seeing the biggest spike from 28,000 streams between September 13-16 to 103,000 between September 20-23. On Wednesday, the song was at number 40 in the UK’s official singles chart.
Last week, “Blame It on the Rain” and “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” entered Billboard’s TikTok top 50, which measures the popularity of songs based on video creations, views, and user engagement on the app in the US.
TikTok can play a major part in such revivals, where trends help spread songs to users who haven’t watched the relevant show.
Before Milli Vanill’s newfound success, Kate Bush’s 1985 track “Running Up That Hill” became Spotify’s most streamed throwback song of 2022 (defined as songs released over 20 years ago) after featuring on “Stranger Things” season four. The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck,” meanwhile, was featured in a viral dance scene in “Wednesday,” and was streamed over two million times the week after the show’s release — a more than 8650% increase from the average 47 weeks before that year, Billboard reported.
In May, Billboard ranked the top 20 most valuable TV shows for artists and producers to have songs featured on — based on criteria including cultural impact and earning potential — and nearly half were Netflix series, including “You,” “Wednesday,” “Stranger Things,” and “Bridgerton.”
Jenna Ortega inspired a viral TikTok dance trend with her performance in “Wednesday.”
Netflix
Artists may not make much money from a song’s revival
However, the real-world impact for artists of a spike in streams isn’t clear-cut.
Using the example of Milli Vanilli, Anu Pillai, a producer and an executive board member of the UK’s Music Producers Guild, told Business Insider that while the details aren’t public, the royalties artists received from record deals made in the 1980s were often low.
Such deals are also not typically updated for the digital streaming age, meaning artists won’t see much of any profits unless they are able to renegotiate their contracts.
“When something like this resurgence happens 20 years later, for example, the people making money aren’t those artists. It’s those record labels that have held them to those legacy deals,” he said.
Pillai added: “it’s always positive that your music could reach a new audience. That is the joy of music.”
A representative for Morvan, who outlived Pilatus, did not respond to a comment request from BI.
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