Pop music producer, singer Farian dies

Acclaimed German pop music producer and former pop singer Frank Farian, who shaped the country's sound for decades, has died at his home in Miami, reported dpa.

Farian was 82 years old. The Allendorf Media agency announced his death on Tuesday on behalf of his family.

Farian produced major pop music classics since the 1970s and helped shape the soundtrack of an entire generation, including with hits like "Daddy Cool" and "Rasputin."

He created the hit vocal group Boney M, writing most of the group's songs, and helped create and launch Milli Vanilli to international stardom. He also created hits for bands like No Mercy and Eruption.

Farian signed the duo Milli Vanilli to a contract and arranged for studio performers to sing on the recordings instead of the performers themselves.

Milli Vanilli, made up of childhood friends Robert "Rob" Pilatus and Fabrice "Fab" Morvan from Munich, scored a major global hit with the disco tune "Girl You Know It's True" and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide by the end of the 1980s.

The first Milli Vanilli album went six times platinum in the United States in 1989, and the duo won a Grammy for Best New Artist.

Revelations in the 1990s that the duo didn't sing themselves and had lip-synced the songs during performances shocked the music world and became a major scandal.

Although Farian appeared to churn out gold records and celebrated regular success on the music charts, he once said that the secret of his own success remained indecipherable.

When he mixed a song, he thought of his time as a chef: "It's always about the ingredients. You can say you're going to be a musician, but a lot of it is luck. You can't plan success."