on girl talk’s new album

I don’t want to sound like a snob, but…

Girl Talk was big in 2008, when the mainstream but slightly alternative audience didn’t know that DJ stuff (I’m sorry, but that’s kind of what he does, in the mashup sense) wasn’t just for eurotrash. And Feed the Animals soared. After all, it’s party-ready and it has a great beat. It was cool for awhile, because it was fun to hear pop songs put in a completely different context.

But I feel like now that All Day has come out, Girl Talk is past his prime. That doesn’t mean that All Day is worse than any of his other albums—it’s just as good—it’s just that his method, and the mashup phase, is getting kind of old.

As I listened to it, sure, I enjoyed it. But mashups like the ones Girl Talk creates are based totally on the goal of audience recognition of the songs. The whole point of GT’s sets is for you to be like, “man, that was totally awesome when he mixed party in the USA with Dr Dre.” Sure, I smiled when he sampled “blitzkrieg bop,” and it’s always a delight to hear things like the Ramones mixed into your Saturday night, but, in my opinion, it’s about time that we start appreciating what it means to be a DJ without only appreciating it when it involves familiar songs we know.