Yesterday I was playing Frisbee and someone put on Girl Talk. Okay. I can listen to it for a few minutes. I’ll grant the first few moments of the Feed The Animals album, where he interpolates “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “Intl. Players Anthem” are pretty energizing. But then it kept playing. And kept playing. And it went on and on, and on and on and on. And I wanted to tear my shirt off and scream to the heavens what I thought about this interminable dirge of Top 40 patchwork. I kept it to myself in the name of good will and good spirit, but I need to let it all out now.
Girl Talk is really, really not good. There, I said it. Come and tear my face off, rest of Hampshire student body. I know I’m alone in this. But try as I might to conform (and I do try—oh, how I love to let others dictate my tastes! I’m not being sarcastic) I cannot seem to comprehend the significance or the quality of this artist.
Musical mash-ups are a cool idea, and I suppose a Girl Talk show might be a great party, but that’s it. It holds no other value—and it’s funny that it doesn’t do anything for me, because I’m all for rethinking the arbitrary barriers and genre divisions that we impose on popular music. The basic thesis of Greg Gillis’ thing is that we should try to understand how the music we listen to is connected at its essence (or some similar, vague hokum spun by the enraptured hipster music writers, presumably on a mind-melting caffeine bender that could make the “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” song sound groundbreaking) but all I ever think when I’m listening to these self-satisfied art school audio collages is that I’d rather just be hearing a playlist of the individual songs. The general promise of the concept, and its utter failure to be as entertaining as it should, makes Girl Talk not only annoying but depressing as well.
Girl Talk is one of the most overrated acts of the new musical age. It is the sonic equivalent of the color brown—a mixture of all the other colors of the rainbow that doesn’t, shockingly, produce a magical super-color but an ugly, disposable muddle of meaningless cacophony. Girl Talk’s popularity is unbearable, as well—the result of the enraptured bleating of the musical snob-mob comprised of critics and bloggers too snooty to find enjoyment in the actual canon of modern mainstream music, trusting some guy from Pittsburgh to splice all the good parts together on his laptop, trusting that their peers will appreciate their selective taste for musical consumption in the postmodern world. I guess I should be more compassionate, and usually I would be, but I’m on the internet, so fuck it. Fuck the Pitchfork generation, fuck the falsity of Cultural Capital, and fuck Girl Talk.
P.S.: I was searching around for some validation that I am not completely insane (because, you know, I lack a single thread of confidence in my convictions). I found it—written far more eloquently and eviscerating-ly than I could ever manage. Props, random internet critic guy. You are the one sane voice howling for reason above the din of hipster idiocy.
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This is a pretty good rant. I don't really like girl talk that much. Dave hates pitchfork, you should talk to him about that.
ReplyDeleteI should say, though, that I'm a little worried that you must secretly not like Dave and I so much, since we do, I admit, wear skinny jeans and v necks from american apparel, and our orientation group your first year had the term cultural capital in its title.
ReplyDeletehaha, that's hilarious.
ReplyDeletei was the one that put girl talk on. it was my ipod and i didn't want to d.j. but also didn't want to listen to the same artist. i didn't have a playlist ready. see, girl talk is a nice back up. otherwise we would have been listening to one of my playlists that i haven't updated in about a year. that would be bad.
it was driving me crazy too because i'm sick of girl talk. once practice was over, i even asked sam (who forced me into bringing my ipod) if it was driving him crazy. he said he thought it was fine.
for future reference, i think the music is free game at frisbee. especially if the same artist has been playing forever. i would also much rather not bring my ipod. bring yours!
yeah bro, bring gary numan, it's the only way to live
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