In the first seconds of Girl Talk’s All Day, the mashup messiah lays Ludacris on top of Black Sabbath demonstrating very early that he’s continuing to freely cross-contaminate any genres. Within a few minutes he’s rolling in Jane’s Addiction, MIA, Color me Badd, and Missy Elliot. For a guy like Gregg Gillis, it’s not about blowing down doors and ironically combining things that the casual music fan would never think of together–it’s about making art. It’s not a coincidence that Illegal Art is distributing the album for free!
With his previous releases, like Night Ripper and Feed the Animals, Girl Talk has made a name for himself from his tight mixes. And he’s made a career for himself from his live shows. Now settled in his pop culture role, the songs expand a bit on All Day, ranging from 5:10-6:37 in length. They’re now mini-mixes that meet in between to make a magnum opus. Listeners can invest themselves in these longer pieces, rather than the fleeting pop songs on the radio. It’s an amazing situation: Gillis can create songs longer than audiences are used to and not worry about their attention-wandering minds, because his samples rarely extend longer than a minute or two before moving into something else.
Gillis dips into newer catalogs like Big Boi’s “Shutterbug,” Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” and Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” But he also floats these new classics in nostalgia, like Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” in “Jump on Stage,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” in “Make Me Wanna,” and The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” in “This is the Remix.” He still gets showy at times, making you wonder “Who else can put ODB’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” over Radiohead’s “Creep” like this?” or “Where else is Modern English clashing with Jay-Z?”
To call out all the samples would be futile, but there’s no one who can listen to this 71-minute collection and not recognize something from their favorite hits of today or gems in forgotten memories. While someone might say Girl Talk is a genre-mixing genius, he’s more personally a time-bending scientist of sound. (And speaking of scientists of sound, the Beastie Boys are in there, too.) You should really let him experiment on your musical mind. Again, it’s free!