More Thoughts On Girl Talk

[James originally wrote this in response to my review of Girl Talk, Death Set and Passion Pit at BU. I think it makes quite a few good points and that it warranted its own post. - Aaron]

The thing about the Girl Talk fanbase is that they were mostly shown Girl Talk by their “weird” friend. The “weird” friend is that guy/girl whose car you hated being in in high school because he would refuse to play the self-titled Sublime album and insist on playing Modest Mouse’s The Lonesome Crowded West. The “weird” friend is also the guy/girl that would show up to the party late because they were at a “show” with some people that were even weirder. Most shows are full of “weird” people, they are the nodes in everyone’s music finding network. A girl talk show is the exact opposite of that because all the “weird” people saw GT last year and are ideologically opposed to $20+ ticket prices (BU is a unique case). For that reason you get a very douchey audience that never sees live music outside of 19,000 person arenas. Fortunately, for every douche, there is a really hot girl dancing her face off; grinding like Aaron’s teeth in his sleep.

The reason Girl Talk has these crowds is due to accessibility and familiarity. He has a mass appeal to the 18-25 year old crowd because its every single song you heard on the radio and MTV during the period of your life where you actually had to go to the store to buy your music. About 50% of the songs happen to be all the songs you hear at crappy sports bars and keg parties. Essentially, you have a 4 hour playlist crammed into 40 minutes and the result is just that; 4 hours of dancing crammed into 40 minutes.