Chatty Kathy
People just can’t shut up about Girl Talk.
I’d initially written off Night Ripper, the widely acclaimed (and somewhat controversial) third Girl talk album, based on hearing a couple of tracks, and what I thought was a rather sober assessment of the projects approach. For those who haven’t heard: Night Ripper is an album composed almost entirely from samples of hugely popular, widely recognizable songs from the genres of mainstream pop, radio-friendly indie/alternative rock, Top 40 hip hop, and so on. It is essentially the logical endpoint of the mashup, eschewing song structure and dynamic variation for 40 minutes, and piling just the hooks of songs you already know and love into a miasma of nostalgia. It’s dancefloor friendly in the sense that it never changes tempo, even at the expense of painfully obvious pitch-shifting.
But after hearing stories about the utter insanity of the recent live show at Chop Suey, and the incessant praise for the album, I figured a closer look was called for.
Well, I have to say that my opinion has not changed. Technically, it’s mediocre at best, often stripping the original tracks of their intensity in order to fit them into what is basically a bland progression of barely altered loops. Take the novelty appeal of the mashup (OMG! Joy Division and Missy Elliot! What other shocking combination can we come up with?) and aim it at a target market with an attention span of 8 seconds, and you have Night Ripper in a nutshell. The hard work (writing effective melodies and rhythms) is already done, and Night Ripper offers no context, no transformation to elevate the fragmentary procession to the realm of commentary or statement. It panders, giving us one rush of recognition after another and failing to make anything lasting or truly affecting. It’s the musical equivalent of throwing candy to the audience. What’s not to like, right? Even if the occasional chocolate covered rat turd (like “My Humps”) gets thrown in with the candy.
The most fascinating aspect of the album is the legal aspect (and if that isn’t a sign of artistic bankruptcy, I don’t know what is). Released by the semi-infamous label/art project Illegal Art, the album includes liner notes detailing every artist that was sampled. So far, there has been no public action taken from any of the labels, artists, or publishers involved, which is surprising. Especially considering the album was incredibly heavily hyped, mostly on the internet at first, but eventually spilling over to mainstream publications like Rolling Stone, who found a spot for it on their Best of 2006 list.
I’m all for sampling, but it often becomes a crutch for lazy musicians when it could be a catapult. And I sincerely hope there are no legal repercussions for the artist or label from this, but it baffles me to see music that is so ridiculously basic and obviously pandering getting so much praise. Sure, it’s got to be fun live, and a fun spot-the-riff game the first time you hear it, but what is there beyond that? I can’t wait for next year, when someone makes a film mashup of all the biggest explosions, funniest punchlines, and hottest sex scenes from the previous years’ films and tries to pass it off as serious artistry.
