Girl Talk (musician)

Gillis began experimenting with electronic music and sampling while a student at Chartiers Valley High School in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania suburb of Bridgeville. After a few collaborative efforts, he started the solo "Girl Talk" project while studying biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. In school, Gillis focused on tissue engineering.

Gillis states his musical inspirations to have been Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Just Blaze, Nirvana and Kid606 among others.[4][5][6] He has also stated interest in punk rock, as well as noise musician Merzbow. He stated that he was first introduced to the genre of Plunderphonics by John Oswald.[7] Gillis has also stated that he was always into hip-hop and pop music. As he aged, he started to like older musicians such as The Beatles.[8]

Gillis worked as an engineer, but he quit in May 2007 to focus solely on music.[9]

He produces mash-up remixes, in which he uses often a dozen or more unauthorized samples from different songs to create a mash-up. The New York Times Magazine has called his releases "a lawsuit waiting to happen",[10] a criticism that Gillis has attributed to news media that want "to create controversy where it doesn't really exist", citing fair use as a legal backbone for his sampling practices.[11]

Gillis has given his own different explanations for the origin of his stage name, once saying that it alluded to a Jim Morrison poem[12] and once saying that it alluded to an early Merzbow side project.[13] In 2009, he attributed the name to Tad, the early 1990s SubPop band, based in Seattle.[14] Gillis has said the name sounded like a Disney music teen girl group.[15]

In a 2009 interview with FMLY, Gillis stated:

The name Girl Talk is a reference to many things, products, magazines, books. It's a pop culture phrase. The whole point of choosing the name early on was basically to just stir things up a little within the small scene I was operating from. I came from a more experimental background and there were some very overly serious, borderline academic type electronic musicians. I wanted to pick a name that they would be embarrassed to play with. You know Girl Talk sounded exactly the opposite of a man playing a laptop, so that's what I chose.[16]

Gillis is featured heavily in the 2008 open source documentary RiP!: A Remix Manifesto.

Girl Talk released his fifth LP All Day on November 15, 2010 – free through the Illegal Art website.[17] A U.S. tour in support of All Day began in Gillis's hometown of Pittsburgh with two sold-out shows at the then-recently completed Stage AE concert hall.[18] Since Gillis releases his music under Creative Commons licenses, fans may legally use it in derivative works. Many create mash-up video collages using the samples' original music videos.[19] Filmmaker Jacob Krupnick chose Gillis's full-length album All Day as the soundtrack for Girl Walk//All Day, an extended music video set in New York City.[20]

In 2014, Girl Talk brought out Freeway as a special guest during a show at the Brooklyn Bowl.[21] They announced that they were releasing a collaborative EP together called Broken Ankles.[21] The project was released on April 8, 2014.[22]

Gillis played at the Coachella Festival in 2014. For the first time in one of his live shows, artists performed their vocals over his mash-ups. During the first weekend, he was joined by Too Short, E-40, Juicy J, and Busta Rhymes.[23][24] On the second weekend, he was joined by Freeway, Waka Flocka Flame, Tyga, and Busta Rhymes.[25]

In the years following the release of Broken Ankles, Girl Talk continued to tour and play festivals. He also began to do more production and collaborative work with other artists such as Wiz Khalifa, Young Nudy, T-Pain, Smoke DZA, Bas, and G Perico.[26][27]

After the success of his album Feed the Animals, for which listeners were asked to pay a price of their choosing, Gillis made all of his other albums similarly available via the Illegal Art website.

Night Ripper was number 34 on Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2006,[28] number 22 on Rolling Stone's Best Albums of 2006,[29] and number 27 on Spin's 40 Best Albums of 2006.[30] In 2007, Gillis was the recipient of a Wired magazine Rave Award.[31]

Feed the Animals was number four on Time's Top 10 Albums of 2008.[32] Rolling Stone gave the album four stars and ranked the album #24 on their Top 50 albums of 2008.[33] Blender rated it the second-best recording/album of 2008,[34] and National Public Radio listeners rated it the 16th best album of the year.[35]

Gillis' hometown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, named December 7, 2010 "Gregg Gillis Day".[36]

In 2007, Girl Talk appeared in Good Copy Bad Copy, a documentary about the current state of copyright law and remix culture.

In 2008, he appeared as a test case for fair use in Brett Gaylor's RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, a call to overhaul copyright laws. His parents, in one scene, complain to him about his frequent stripping during his performances.

Gillis began producing music with AudioMulch software, which he still uses, played live from a computer. During a live performance, he uses samples and loops to play a set — allowing room for variation throughout the set. His live sets are typically accompanied by video content on stage. He has been known to bring fans on stage to dance during performances.[52]

• Girl Talk discography at Discogs
• 2012 Article & Interview
• Girl Talk at Illegal Art

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