Hey all you cool cats and kittens. If your weekend in self-isolation looked anything like mine, then you, too, binged Tiger King, swooned over Joe Exotic‘s ARIA-worthy tracks and vowed to one day recreate their stunning accompanying visuals. In this case, I bring you heart-breaking news – Joe Exotic didn’t actually sing his songs. We’ve been swindled again.
As reported by Vanity Fair, musical duo Vince Johnson and Danny Clinton – who formed The Clinton Johnson Band before Clinton’s untimely death last year – were the masterminds behind Exotic’s bops. Exotic had initially come across the pair via an advertisement, with the intention to create a theme song for the park. What eventuated was Johnson and Clinton writing and producing tracks that Exotic claimed to sing.
“I had no idea he was going to Milli Vanilli the songs,” Johnson told Vanity Fair. “It was a couple of months and [after] two or three songs when I was on YouTube one night and just happened to look up Joe Exotic. And there he was, lip-syncing and acting like the ghost of Elvis. I called him up, I was hot… And he bamboozled me about his reality show – that it was coming soon and he would make everything right as rain. I just wanted the proper credit.”
Rick Kirkham, the producer whose work was heartbreakingly destroyed in the zoo’s studio explosion, also told Vanity Fair had shit vocals. “One time, Joe got a little bit drunk and high,” he said, “and we actually coaxed him into singing part of one of the songs. He couldn’t even hold a tune. It was just so ludicrous.”
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, given the amount of lies, deceit and fuckery in the show.
That being said, the tunes themselves still slap and I will most definitely continue to stream them to my heart’s content.
