The Grey Album was a mash-up album made by DJ Danger Mouse released in 2004. The album features a cappella samples of Jay-Z's Black Album and mixes it with dozens of unauthorized samples taken from The Beatles' LP The Beatles(more commonly known as the White Album). Danger Mouse released limited copies of his work to a few outlets of the internet. The album quickly gained popularity and the amount of attention caught the ears of EMI, the copyright holder of The Beatles. The body quickly ordered the DJ to stop production of the album. The funny thing is, only the copyright holders of the Beatles' works were upset about the mash. Jay-Z's a cappella album was also copyrighted material; however, it was produced with the implicit purpose of creating mashups. Below is a video the song "Encore" featuring samples from "Savoy Truffle" and "Glass Onion".
The mashup is beautifully done. So much so it creates a brand new song; with its own personality and sound. So if Danger Mouse got in so much trouble, what about Girl Talk?
Girl Talk is a DJ artist specializing in mixing and mashups. However, GT uses dozens of samples from copyrighted material. New York Times Magazine called Girl Talk's music "a lawsuit waiting to happen." Below is a video of Girl Talk's "Once Again".
The funny thing about this video is just that: the video clips used to make this video mash are also copyrighted material. So how does Girl Talk get away with what he does? Assembling of songs from other recordings has been done since the beginning of recorded and published music. Most recently, mashups have been featured in and have featured rap and hip-hop songs. Much of Girl Talk's work consists of hip-hop samples. Not to mention, Jay-Z really didn't get that upset when Danger Mouse sampled his work. So, the conlcusion looks to be, if you want to make a mash-up, use mostly hip-hop samples, and stray far away from anything Beatles.
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