If you were asked to name the three lowest moments in the history of the Grammy Awards, you ... might have a tough time narrowing down a proper list. You might note the year the Grammys introduced a heavy metal category, rightfully nominated Metallica and then gave the award to Jethro Tull. Or the year Macklemore swept Kendrick Lamar in the hip-hop categories, prompting an outcry from pretty much everyone, including Macklemore himself. Or the year Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" lost record of the year to Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy," or … okay, let's move on. Grammy history is festooned with inexplicable snubs, embarrassments, blind spots and moments in which classics were passed over in favor of flashes in the pan.
Still, the Grammys have never absorbed a greater embarrassment than they experienced when news broke that the public-facing members of Milli Vanilli — winner of the Grammy for best new artist at the beginning of 1990 — didn't sing their own songs. Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, the photogenic performers who'd been the faces of Milli Vanilli, were actually lip-syncing the frothy pop songs that had made them famous. It was a significant scandal in the fall of 1990 — though, as is the case with so many scandals, the folks who experienced the most public shaming (Pilatus, Morvan, the Recording Academy) didn't exactly align with those most directly responsible (if you're looking for someone to blame, consider producer Frank Farian, or perhaps the rain). Milli Vanilli's Grammy was revoked and that was that.
The incident didn't just make the Grammys look bad, or throw kindling on the roaring rhetorical fire of those lamenting the fabricated nature of so much pop music. It also compelled them to be more cautious about honoring genres and subgenres widely viewed as lightweight. In the decades since, the Grammys have been slow to embrace boy bands, K-pop acts and other artists who face a credibility gap among Grammy voters, whose 21st century preferences have tended more toward legacy acts (Steely Dan, Herbie Hancock), flamboyant showmen (Jon Batiste, Bruno Mars), jazzy pop sophisticates (Norah Jones, Samara Joy) and contemporary rock stars (Beck, Foo Fighters).
When Harry Styles won album of the year in 2023 and said, "This doesn't happen to people like me very often," he got roasted for it on social media. But people like Styles — not "rich young good-looking white men" so much as "singers who came up in boy bands like One Direction" — actually have often struggled to win Grammys, and are generally expected to pass through a sort of authenticity gauntlet (or at least demonstrate pop-cultural staying power) before getting accepted into the club. The Grammys have even tweaked their own eligibility requirements for the category of best new artist — it used to be far more stringent about newness than it is now — in part to allow acts more time to prove themselves.
Why does that unofficial authenticity gauntlet exist? At least one of the answers is that Milli Vanilli won best new artist in 1990. As much as the Grammys are known for making embarrassing mistakes — you know it's true — they're also known for overcorrecting in the years that follow. Metallica lost that metal Grammy for …And Justice for All in 1989, only to win an award for "One" (a song from the same record!) the following year, and then "Stone Cold Crazy" the year after that, and then the black album the year after that. Kendrick Lamar got shut out in that fateful Year of Macklemore (2014), only to win 22 Grammys and counting in the years since — including two in 2015 and five in 2016. After years of frustration in the general categories, Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter finally won album of the year in 2025, after decades of taking home awards primarily in genre-specific categories like R&B and pop.
The Grammys, for all their faults, do try to right their old wrongs. But the initial beneficiaries of their mistakes aren't always so lucky. Macklemore has never sniffed a Grammy nomination in the years since beating Lamar. In the case of Jethro Tull, that 1989 win corresponded with the veteran band's first — and, at least as of this writing, last — nomination.
Milli Vanilli's post-Grammy story has proven more complicated — and tragic. Pilatus and Morvan attempted a comeback as actual singers, released an ill-fated album as Rob & Fab in 1993 and even prepared a follow-up. But that record was shelved upon Pilatus' death in 1998. Morvan, however, has kept working — as a musician, a DJ and an author. Earlier this year, he released his memoir, You Know It's True: The Real Story of Milli Vanilli, which was accompanied by an audiobook read by Morvan himself.
On Nov. 7, 35 years after the Grammys forgot his number, Morvan was nominated in the category of best audio book, narration and storytelling recording. His competition includes Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Dalai Lama, who, had they thought ahead, really should have lip-synced each other's books, just to be rascals.
It's a twist few saw coming: a redemption story for a guy who helped bend the arc of Grammy history.
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