#28 on the 2010 Musical Bacon Calendar

By now most everybody knows who Girl Talk is and what he’s about. But just in case: Girl Talk is somewhat of an anomaly in the music world. He creates new songs out of old songs unlike anyone before him. Everything in the sampling world is child’s play compared to what Gregg Gillis does with the popular songs he cuts up and splices back together.

Give the above song, “On No” — track #1 from his new and freely downloadable album All Day — a listen and you’ll get the gist of what he’s capable of. Some people find his approach to songmaking a bit much. I tend to listen to music as background filler, but this album forces itself to the foreground any time I listen to it. It’s full of songs you recognize, and I invariably find myself trying to pick apart each sample. Thankfully, there’s a website that does the work for you, telling you which samples are playing at any given time while listening to the album.

All Day doesn’t present anything new, but that’s ok in my book. What Gillis does is so unlike everyone else out there, it continues to feel fresh and new to me. The interesting twist this time around is the offering of the album for free. Not only does he sample a huge number of popular songs that he has not gotten permission to sample from the artists within, he’s now giving those newly compiled samples away for free. That’s gotta raise some hackles. And for that, I commend him.

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29. A Storm – A Tree – My Mother’s Head by Bobby Bare Jr.
30. 03 to TEN by Knathan Ryan
31. In This Light On This Evening by Editors