The New York Times enjoys doing trend pieces, so it seems like the 'trend of the week' is Girl Talk aka Greg Gillis. They wrote some article abt him entitled "The 373-Hit Wonder" where they educate readers abt things like 'how alt is Girl Talk', 'how many samples does Girl Talk use', 'how famous is Girl Talk' and 'is Girl Talk way more innovative than Andy Warhol.'

Ultimately a piece intended for lamestreamers and uncool dads, but still kinda funnie when 'the mainstream media' tries 2 make an alt_wave/malstream artist seem 'kewl and interesting and innovative'.

Who the eff is Girl Talk? Did yall know he is totally innovative bc he uses samples and 'gives it away 4 free on the internet'?

Girl Talk is the stage name of the 29-year-old Pittsburgh native Gregg Gillis.

In November, Gillis and his label, Illegal Art, released the fifth Girl Talk album, “All Day,” as a free download. Within 24 hours, several sites had posted annotations of “All Day,” cataloging the samples on the album —there are 373 of them. Download traffic was so heavy that MTV News ran the headline “Girl Talk Apologizes for Breaking the Internet” — hyperbole, but not far from the truth. Illegal-art.net reports that “All Day” was downloaded so often that the servers crashed. In Girl Talk’s honor, Pittsburgh declared Dec. 7, 2010, “Gregg Gillis Day.”

Kinda feel bad for Pittsburgh knowing that 'sample based music' is their #1 export and they are giving it away for free. Seems like they will be 'riding Detroit waves' pretty soon.

Tons of authentic pix of ppl 'partying hard.'

Here is a paragraph where they try to make Girl Talk's music 'sound beautiful', like it has universal appeal or something.

All this excitement is focused on a performer whose instrument is a laptop. Girl Talk songs are mash-ups: chunks of other people’s songs combined into new ones: the Rolling Stones and the rapper Wiz Khalifa, Ice Cube and Devo. The mash-ups sound ironic to the ironically inclined and like pure joy to the joyfully inclined, and for both camps they’re fun to dance to. These are not just a collection of other people’s hooks; Girl Talk has created a new kind of hook that encompasses 50 years of the revolving trends of pop music. Sometimes cynicism is a hook, sometimes the hook is humor, angst, irony, aggression, sex or sincerity. Girl Talk’s music asserts all these things at once.

Did yall know that Gregg Gillis 'parties so hard' that he causes physical harm 2 his body?

Minutes before showtime, I found Gillis alone in a kind of abandoned break room. His baseball cap had been replaced by a sweatband, and his custom basketball shoes — Nikes that really do say “Girl Talk” — sat on a folding chair beside him. He wrapped athletic bandages carefully around both of his feet: for the next 70 minutes on stage, he would dance so hard that he would be sick to his stomach afterward, like a marathon runner. The intensity with which he dances occasionally makes his feet bleed. He can’t stop his feet pounding, his head bobbing. Before he found the right kind of table, adjusted to the proper height, he got dark bruises on both thighs from crashing against it in his trance.

Sorta wonder if this is true. Feel like maybe he should stop wearing basketball shoes or something. I feel like a healthy human being's feet would be pretty chill after DJing a show. He's gotta be doing something wrong/making this story up.

Wonder if this is a picture of Gregg Gillis' feet after a show.

Did u know that Girl Talk uses snippets of songs called "samples" which could be highly illegal if he wasn't so 'awesome'?

To secure permission to use the 373 samples on “All Day” would cost, Gillis estimates, millions of dollars. Some labels would refuse, others would draw him into endless negotiation. But he has never been sued. No one has ever asked him to stop doing what he’s doing. One of the acts he samples on “All Day,” the Toadies, proudly put a link to Girl Talk on their home page.

Did u know that Pitchfork Media is responsible for 'the success of Girl Talk'?

But by 2006, people were starting to take seriously what had started as Gillis’s avant-pop joke. Pitchfork, the influential indie-rock Web site, gave “Night Ripper,” Girl Talk’s third release, an out-of-the-blue rave review. Girl Talk was suddenly headlining the Mercury Lounge in New York. “I was weirded out,” he says of that night. “These people actually wanted to see this laptop show. I used to pretend that the audience was having fun. After six years of pretending, the audience was now actually having fun.”

Here is the part of the interview where the interviewer asks Gregg 'hey are u the new Warhol?' and Greggies is all like "Hell yeah I am, bitches. I shit on that dude's art."

I asked him if, in addition to the Pirates and the Steelers, he ever felt any identification with another Pittsburgh institution, Andy Warhol, who blurred the usual distinctions between shallow and deep, trashy and sublime (and who broke through with a “sample” of Campbell’s soup cans).

“I definitely see parallels,” he said. “He made work that was very visual. Very conceptually focused. But also art fans could easily dismiss it.”

Do yall have an easier time dismissing Warhol or Gillis?

Here is the closing paragraph where Gregg compares himself to a famous NBA player just because he gets free shoes.

It has grown into something absurdly bigger than Gillis ever dreamed. Something — his inner Pittsburgher, perhaps — keeps his focus not on the “big” but on the “absurd.”

“When the Jordan brand is sending you free shoes,” he tells me, “it’s pretty much the peak of success in my mind."

Is Girl Talk 'the ultimate frat boy DJ'?

Does Girl Talk 'come across like an a-hole'?
Is this profile piece 'a disgrace' 2 journalism?
Is Greggy Gillies 'the new Warhol'?
Is Andy Warhol 'spinning over in his grave' after this puff piece?
Is Girl Talk 'the ultimate mainstream DJ'?
R u worried abt the economy of Pittsburgh?
Do u think Girl Talk is jealous of DJ Pauly D for 'getting 2 date Chloe Sevigny'? [link]

Girl Talk

Alternative Celebrity, DJ

Girl Talk is a laptop DJ who got big in the bloghouse era but really just produces generic, well-branded mix tapes.

Lists: indie hunks, 2k10 buzzbands, beards, bloghouse era, Producers

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