Girl Talk

DJ Greg Gillis, AKA Girl Talk, has come under a lot of scrutiny recently for his work. Girl Talk creates “mash-ups” in which he re-mixes and layers songs from multiple genres to create new pieces of work. Formerly a biomedical engineer, Gillis has recently quit his day job to pursue his mash-ups full time. His last album, Feed The Animals, featured samples from over 300 different songs. Many people argue that Girl Talk’s creations abuse copyright laws as he does not seek permission from the artists he uses. However, Gillis feels that his work clearly falls under fair use guidelines. He even goes as far as to assert that his work actually helps the original artists. In a video interview conducted by the website “Ryan is Hungry” Gillis states that “I may sample James Taylor for twenty seconds on my album. No one is buying my album because they want to hear that James Taylor song instead of James Taylor’s cd. There is hundreds, maybe thousands of kids who e-mail me and be like “what’s that sample?”… They’re going to go download that song and they may end up buying that album.” Gillis argues that because his clips are short and his creations are so different from the original work, he is not affecting the artists’ sales.