Girl Talk
Words: Cameron Worden
Photos: Cameron Worden

I don’t normally drink energy drinks; however on this particular night I made an exception. Energy drinks, in a lot of ways, represent a certain party culture. They’ve replaced cocaine as the yuppie nightlife stimulant of choice. The music that Greg Gillis, more popularly known as Girl Talk, makes seems to reconcile this yuppie party culture and the indie-hipster culture. After all, the two have been moving closer and closer towards each other in recent times, with shows like the OC becoming showcases for bands like Sufjan Stevens and Modest Mouse and with more hipsters with angular haircuts and Death Cab for Cutie t-shirts showing up at dance clubs (the two have a huge crossover audience since both groups seem to be made up of young, rich, white people).

Not having showered or changed out of my dirty Odem Press t-shirt in a few days, I felt vaguely out of place. The typical crowd seemed to be well groomed and well dressed. Of course, a great deal of the club patrons seemed oblivious to who Girl Talk actually was. The place was dotted with a few other guys in dirty v-necks who I could tell were not regulars. The power of Girl Talk is that he’s able to frame pop music in a way that provokes listeners to think about music in completely different ways. It’s also consistently catchy and above all else fun.

After waiting through a couple barely tolerable (and one really great) DJ sets, Gillis emerged dressed in suit and tie with a pair of faux-Ray-Bans. After starting up his laptop and rambling on for a few moments about Orlando and Universal Studios, Girl Talk began his set with selections from Ciara’s “Goodies” and set the party in gear. As he moved through a series of highly recognizable pop songs, the crowd would cheer accordingly whenever a new sample popped up. Highlights (and borderline transcendent moments) included a Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M.” over Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There it is)” over the Smashing Pumpkin’s “1979” with an innumerable amount of similarly arresting selections appearing in between.

The set ended with a wonderfully inventive cover of Nirvana’s “Scentless Apprentice”. At this point, Gillis had lost his shirt and glasses and was covered in sweat. He pressed play on his laptop, grabbed the microphone and dove into the crowd. After accidentally kicking a girl in the face while dancing earlier in his set, Girl Talk finished the night and cemented his place in my mind as one of the greatest performers I have ever seen by crowd surfing to pre-programmed beats playing from his laptop.