Fabrice Morvan

Is Paula Abdul the only woman singing lead vocals on her smash debut album, "Forever Your Girl?" Not according to Yvette Marine, one of three singers credited with background vocals on the album, which has sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. and made Abdul one of the hottest properties in dance-pop.

Take heart, Olympic detail fiends: If the last two weeks have gotten you in the habit of squinting at your television in search of flubbed lutzes and leaning judges, you'll still have plenty of subtleties and misdirection to look for in Sunday night's closing ceremonies. Like the performances that opened the Games on Feb. 8, the send-off performances won't be as live as they look.

Three months after the Milli Vanilli pop scandal, lip-syncing remains a live issue in the record business. Anyone short on evidence need look no further than the hottest dance-pop hit of the season: C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat." The million-selling song has topped the pop, dance and R&B charts in recent weeks, thanks in part to veteran R&B singer Martha Wash's dynamic "Everybody dance now" vocal hook.

It's less than a week after pop duo Milli Vanilli revealed that they did not sing on their Grammy-winning album or in their live appearances, but repercussions from the hoax are already beginning to be felt throughout the music industry. The Grammy, for best new artist of 1989, was revoked Monday by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, an Oakland woman has sued the group for fraud and legislators are proposing to outlaw undisclosed lip-syncing.

Robert Pilatus remembers the morning six weeks ago when he climbed onto the railing of his ninth-floor balcony at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood and tried to muster the courage to jump.

The fans were not amused. The "we were never fans of that techno-pop garbage" people were not surprised. The hip were not paying attention. But everyone had something to say.

Christian: I wish I had your wit . Cyrano: Borrow it, then! Your beautiful young manhood--lend me that. And we two make one hero of romance! --Edmond Rostand, in "Cyrano de Bergerac" The idea is far from new. A hundred years before good-looking Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan won teen-age hearts with someone else's artistry, French dramatist Edmond Rostand was writing about the handsome Christian using the voice and poems of homely Cyrano to win the lovely Roxanne.

The Byrds' 1967 song "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" offered three steps to pop stardom: Get an electric guitar, learn how to play, and get just the right look in the hair and the pants. These days, with the first two tips pretty much passe, it's easy to imagine future chart-toppers studying "Behind the Music," the successful documentary series on cable music channel VH1 that milks the drama out of the peaks and valleys of pop life.

G irl you know it's . . . Girl you know it's . . . Girl you know it's . . . Girl you know it's . . . It was Robert Pilatus' and Fabrice Morvan's worst nightmare come true. There they were dancing and moving their lips in front of 15,000 fans. And the sound system broke down. The machine wouldn't say the word true and, like a scratched record, began to repeat the opening lyrics of the lip-syncing Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True."