Netflix’s Tiger King is full of baffling story lines, looney large-cat lovers, and Coen brothers–esque criminal acts that landed Joe Exotic, the character at the show’s center, a 22-year prison sentence for a harebrained murder-for-hire plot and several wildlife violations. But beneath the unhinged egos and sincerely disturbing treatment of cats is a minor mystery that nagged at us: Who actually recorded the country songs “performed” by Joe throughout the docuseries? And what kind of work went into Exotic’s absurd, homemade, obviously lip-synced music videos—further evidence of Joe’s blissful detachment from planet Earth?

After some light internet research, Vanity Fair concluded that the mystery musicians responsible for Joe’s tracks are Vince Johnson and vocalist Danny Clinton, both of whom are listed in Tiger King’s credits. But Joe guarded this “secret” fiercely.

“It was absolutely ridiculous,” producer Rick Kirkham told Vanity Fair of Joe’s music ruse. Kirkham spent years living on Joe’s now-shuttered zoo, filming footage for a prospective reality show. “One time,” he said, “Joe got a little bit drunk and high, 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. It was a big joke within the crew and staff that it wasn’t him [singing in the videos]—but he was damned insistent to anyone and everyone, including us and my studio crew, that that was him.”

Unbeknownst to Kirkham and the staff, Joe had tracked down Johnson and Clinton and convinced them to produce customized cat songs for free. The musicians had a proven record personalizing lyrics to clients’ needs—Johnson said that a song they wrote about Meineke’s poor service, commissioned by an unhappy customer, was what won over Joe—but had not yet broken through any major market as recording artists. Joe contacted Johnson, explained that he was a large-cat owner operating a private zoo in Oklahoma, and said he needed music for a reality show that was the subject of a bidding war between Animal Planet, Discovery, and National Geographic. Johnson agreed to work pro bono in exchange for the potential exposure his music could get on cable TV.

The first song Johnson and Clinton recorded was “I Saw a Tiger”—an ode to Joe’s life passion. The creative process for that song, and the tunes that followed, was simple: Joe would give Johnson a subject (Joe’s late brother, or “the nut in Ohio who was a friend of Joe’s who let his big cats loose,” or a bikers club), and the duo would turn around a track within two weeks.

“I had no idea he was going to Milli Vanilli the songs,” Johnson wrote Vanity Fair in an email. “It was a couple of months and two or three songs [into the collaboration] 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 [in these music videos]. 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.”

Johnson and Clinton went along with the ruse for awhile—thinking their music might finally make it to air—until it was clear that there would never be a real Joe Exotic reality show, beyond the low-fi content Joe was producing for his YouTube channel.