Girl Talk (musician)

Early life and education

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.

Influences

Gillis states his musical inspirations to have been Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. He has also stated interest in punk rock, as well as noise music artist Merzbow.

Gillis has also stated that he was always into hip-hop and pop music. As he aged, he started to like older artists such as The Beatles. He stated that he was first introduced to the genre by John Oswald.

Career

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

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

The name "Girl Talk" is taken from the late '80's and early '90's board game of the same name. Gillis has given his own different explanations for the origin of his stage name, once saying that it alluded to a Jim Morrison poem and once saying that it alluded to an early Merzbow side project. In 2009, he attributed the name to Tad, the early 1990s SubPop band, based in Seattle. Gillis has said the name sounded like a Disney music teen girl group.

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.

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

For possible future projects, Gillis is considering creating an original song rather than full-length albums featuring songs by other musicians tied together. Girl Talk released his fifth LP All Day on November 15, 2010 – free through the Illegal Art website. A U.S. tour in support of All Day began in Gillis's hometown of Pittsburgh with two sold-out shows at the new Stage AE concert hall. Since Gillis releases his music under Creative Commons licenses, fans may legally use it in derivative works. Many create mashup video collages using the samples' original music videos. 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.

In 2012, Illegal Art started to be on an indefinite hiatus, so Girl Talk was not able to release any more of his works through them. In 2013, Girl Talk continued his work on a new mashup album, producing various hip-hop beats and tracks along with his live shows. In 2014, Girl Talk and Freeway performed an unknown collaboration during a private show. Then, Girl Talk released a video clip for "Tolerated" with Freeway and Waka Flocka Flame. The Broken Ankles EP was released soon after via DatPiff.

Gillis played at the Coachella Festival in 2014. For the first time in one of his live shows, artists, including Busta Rhymes, E-40, Juicy J and Freeway, performed their vocals over his mashups.

Album pricing

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.

Awards

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

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

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

Film appearances

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

Albums

EPs

Compilation appearances

Singles

Remixes

Production credits

Live 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.