Biography

Introduction

Gregg Michael Gillis (born October 26, 1981 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is an American musician specializing in mashup DJing and digital sampling. Gillis has released four LPs on the record label Illegal Art and EPs on 333 and 12 Apostles.

Biography

Gillis began making music while a student at Chartiers Valley High School in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bridgeville. After a few collaborative efforts, he started the solo "Girl Talk" project. He continued making music under the Girl Talk alias while studying biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He produces mashup-style remixes, in which he uses often a dozen or more unauthorized samples from different songs to create a new song. The New York Times Magazine has called his music "a lawsuit waiting to happen," a criticism that Gillis has attributed to mainstream media that want "to create controversy where it doesn't really exist," citing fair use as a legal backbone for his sampling practices.

He has given 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. Most recently, he attributed the name to a grunge band called TAD, based in Seattle. In a 2009 interview with FMLY, Gillis stated:

[T]he 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.

Girl Talk is the name of Stephanie Tanner's band in the battle of the bands episode of Full House.

In school, Gillis focused on tissue engineering. He later worked as an engineer, but quit in May 2007 to focus solely on music.

Awards

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 magazine rated it the second-best recording/album of 2008,^{[citation needed]} and NPR listeners rated it the 16th best album of the year.

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.

Discography

Albums

Secret Diary CD (2002, Illegal Art)
Unstoppable CD (2004, Illegal Art)
Night Ripper CD (2006, Illegal Art)
Feed the Animals CD (2008, Illegal Art)

Bootlegs

Girl Talk Murders Seattle (2007)
Live at Bonnaroo (2007)
Live at Capitol Hill Block Party (2007)
Live at Camp Bisco (2007)
Live at All Points West (2008)
Live at Yale (2009)

EPs

Stop Cleveland Hate 12" (2004, 12 apostles)
Bone Hard Zaggin' 7" (2006, 333 recordings)

Compilation appearances

bricolage #1 CD (Illegal Art)
- "Killing A Material Girl" - 3min 37 sec
Illegal Art 2007 Sampler MP3 (Illegal Art)
- "Lets Run This"
Circuits of Steel CD (SSS) (2003)
Ministry of Shit CD (Spasticated)
Love and Circuits CD (Cardboard Records)
- "All Of The Other Songs Remixed" (under Trey Told 'Em)
Circuits of Steel II CD (SSS) (2007)