Grey Album
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''The Grey Album'' is a mashup album by Danger Mouse, released in 2004. It mixes an
a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...
version of rapper
Jay-Z Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), known professionally as Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and founder of Manhattan-based conglomerate talent and entertainment agency Roc Nation. He is regarded as one of ...
's '' The Black Album'' with samples from
the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
' self-titled ninth album, commonly known as "The White Album". ''The Grey Album'' gained notoriety when
EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...
attempted to halt its distribution despite approval of the project from Jay-Z and the two surviving Beatles,
Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
and
Ringo Starr Sir Richard Starkey (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the ...
.


History

Danger Mouse created ''The Grey Album'' as an experimental project intended for a limited 3,000-copy release in February 2004. While Danger Mouse never asked permission to use the Beatles' material, Jay-Z's
a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...
recordings, though copyrighted, were released commercially for the purpose of encouraging mashups and
remix A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...
es. A buzz around the album resulted in wider Internet distribution and media attention garnering a glowing review in the February 9, 2004 issue of ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
''. ''The Grey Album'' was named the best album of 2004 by ''
Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' and ranked No. 10 in ''
The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
's'' annual
Pazz and Jop Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abse ...
critics poll. Danger Mouse is quoted as saying:
A lot of people just assume I took some Beatles and, you know, threw some Jay-Z on top of it or mixed it up or looped it around, but it's really a deconstruction. It's not an easy thing to do. I was obsessed with the whole project, that's all I was trying to do, see if I could do this. Once I got into it, I didn't think about anything but finishing it. I stuck to those two because I thought it would be more challenging and more fun and more of a statement to what you could do with sample alone. It is an art form. It is music. You can do different things, it doesn't have to be just what some people call stealing. It can be a lot more than that.
Danger Mouse also commented at length on the creation of ''The Grey Album'' in the 2007 Danish documentary '' Good Copy Bad Copy: A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture''.


Legal repercussions

The hype around ''The Grey Album'' caught the attention of Beatles' copyright holder EMI, who ordered Danger Mouse and retailers carrying the album to cease distribution. Music industry activist group
Downhill Battle Downhill Battle is a non-profit organization based in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was founded by Nicholas Reville, Holmes Wilson, and Tiffiniy Cheng in August 2003. Downhill Battle is known for its argument that the four major recording labels ha ...
responded by coordinating Grey Tuesday, an
electronic civil disobedience Electronic civil disobedience (ECD; also known as cyber civil disobedience or cyber disobedience) can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobe ...
event held on 24 February 2004. Participating websites posted copies of ''The Grey Album'' for free download for a 24-hour period in protest of EMI's attempts to prevent distribution of the mashup on the grounds that sampling is
fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...
and that a
statutory license A compulsory license provides that the owner of a patent or copyright licenses the use of their rights against payment either set by law or determined through some form of adjudication or arbitration. In essence, under a compulsory license, an ...
should be provided in the same manner as if an artist were to perform or record a
cover version In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song release ...
of a song. Hundreds of
web site A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...
s publicized the event with 170 hosting the album for download. Over 100,000 copies were downloaded on that day alone. The legal repercussions of the protest were minimal; a number of the participants received
cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not dis ...
letters from EMI, but no charges were filed in connection with the event.


Reception and legacy

Danger Mouse is quoted as saying: "This wasn't supposed to happen … I just sent out a few tracks (and) now online stores are selling it and people are downloading it all over the place." Danger Mouse denied being the agent provocateur, saying it "was not my intent to break
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
laws. It was my intent to make an art project." Cultural critic Sam Howard-Spink observed that "The tale of ''The Grey Album'' and Grey Tuesday offers a rich case study for the examination of a wide variety of contemporary cultural issues within the context of the 'copyright wars' remix culture and the age of the digital network."Rimmer, p. 134
Jonathan Zittrain Jonathan L. Zittrain (born December 24, 1969) is an American professor of Internet law and the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. He is also a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer scie ...
, professor of
Internet law Information technology law (also called cyberlaw) concerns the law of information technology, including computing and the internet. It is related to legal informatics, and governs the digital dissemination of both (digitized) information and sof ...
at
Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...
, comments that
As a matter of pure legal doctrine, the Grey Tuesday protest is breaking the law, end of story. But copyright law was written with a particular form of industry in mind. The flourishing of information technology gives amateurs and home-recording artists powerful tools to build and share interesting, transformative, and socially valuable art drawn from pieces of popular cultures. There's no place to plug such an important cultural sea change into the current legal regime.
On November 16, 2010, Jay-Z offered his thoughts on the album during an interview on NPR. "I think it was a really strong album. I champion any form of creativity, and that was a genius idea—to do it. And it sparked so many others like it … I was honored to be on—you know, quote-unquote, the same song with The Beatles." On February 11, 2011, Paul McCartney whilst commenting on the influence of the Beatles and black music gave this assessment as part of a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
documentary titled ''The Beatles and Black Music'', produced by Vivienne Perry and Ele Beattie.
It was really cool when hip-hop started, you would hear references in lyrics, you always felt honored. It's exactly what we did in the beginning – introducing black soul music to a mass white audience. It's come full circle. It's, well, cool. When you hear a riff similar to your own, your first feeling is "rip-off." After you've got over it you think, "Look at that, someone's noticed that riff."
McCartney said of EMI's reaction: "I didn't mind when something like that happened with ''The Grey Album''. But the record company minded. They put up a fuss. But I was like, 'Take it easy guys, it's a tribute.'"


Track listing

All songs sampled are by the Beatles, except where noted.


The Grey Video

In the autumn of 2004 Swiss directing team Ramon & Pedro (Laurent Fauchere and Antoine Tinguely) made "The Grey Video" to promote the single "Encore". The black and white video mixes clips from the Beatles' film '' A Hard Day's Night'' with footage from a Jay-Z concert and new footage and
computer generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images ma ...
to create scenes that involve
John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
breakdancing Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in ...
and
Ringo Starr Sir Richard Starkey (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the ...
scratching Scratching, sometimes referred to as scrubbing, is a DJ and turntablist technique of moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable to produce percussive or rhythmic sounds. A crossfader on a DJ mixer may be used to fade between two record ...
. Because the original Beatles footage was on film and the added footage originated as digital video, picture-quality differences are visible throughout the piece. The video begins with The Beatles performing before cameras and a live audience. Ringo Starr begins to drum to the 1:00 to 1:08 segment of "
Glass Onion A glass onion is a shape of bottle developed in the 17th century. The term may also refer to: * "Glass Onion" (song), a 1968 song by the Beatles. * '' Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery'', a 2022 film by Rian Johnson ** ''Glass Onion: A Knives ...
". John Lennon begins to sing while
George Harrison George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian c ...
and
Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
nod their heads to the
beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery ( ...
. After a few moments, the monitors in the director's booth begin to flicker, showing scenes of
Jay-Z Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), known professionally as Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and founder of Manhattan-based conglomerate talent and entertainment agency Roc Nation. He is regarded as one of ...
rapping "Encore", and the lyrics of the chorus begin to show behind the group. Starr's drum kit becomes a set of turntables and mixer and he begins to scratch while John continues to sing "Oh, yeah!" as sampled from "Glass Onion". As "Encore" moves into the second verse, the beat changes to a sample of "
Savoy Truffle "Savoy Truffle" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 album ''The Beatles'' (also known as "the White Album"). The song was written by George Harrison and inspired by his friend Eric Clapton's fondness for chocolate. The ...
". A John Lennon
body double In filmmaking, a double is a person who substitutes FOR another actor such that the person's face is not shown. There are various terms associated with a double based on the specific body part or ability they serve as a double for, such as stunt ...
starts to breakdance, leading to a head-spin. McCartney and Harrison are replaced by two dancers. The Lennon double backflips off the screen, flinging his wig off. Ringo walks off and the lights fade to black. The video was not available commercially, but became popular over the Internet. Due to the legal issues surrounding the use of copyrighted material, the video is shown with the disclaimer that it was made for non-commercial and experimental purposes only.


Remastered version

In November 2012, recording engineer John Stewart produced a remastered version, ''The Grey Album (Remastered)'', after deciding that there was something amiss with the original sound, and released it for free download.


Other ''Black Album'' remixes

''The Grey Album'' is one of many ''The Black Album'' remix albums. Producers Kno (from the
Cunninlynguists CunninLynguists is an American hip hop group from Lexington, Kentucky. The group currently consists of Deacon the Villain, Kno, and Natti. Early beginnings In 1999, Deacon the Villain and Kno met at Club Kaya in Atlanta, Georgia at an event for ...
) and
Kev Brown Kev Brown is an American music producer and artist. He is the founding member of the former Low Budget Crew References External links Kev Brown's BandcampKev Browndiscography at Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of ...
had already released their own colour-themed remix albums, titled ''The White Al-bu-lum'' and '' The Brown Album'' respectively.
Pete Rock Peter O. Phillips (born June 21, 1970), better known by his stage name Pete Rock, is an American record producer, DJ and rapping, rapper. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest hip hop producers of all time, and is often mentioned alongs ...
remixed Jay-Z's vocals with beats from his own ''
PeteStrumentals ''PeteStrumentals'' is the second studio album from hip hop producer/rapper Pete Rock. The album is an Instrumental hip hop album and the second installment of BBE Records ''Beat Generation'' series, following Jay Dee's '' Welcome to Detroit' ...
'' album for a release on Good Foot Records. Internet distribution of ''The Grey Album'' spurred a series of DJs and amateur mashup artists to mix the a cappella version of ''The Black Album'' with a variety of other artists, including
Weezer Weezer is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1992. Since 2001, the band has consisted of Rivers Cuomo (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Patrick Wilson (drums, backing vocals), Scott Shriner (bass guitar, keyboards, backing v ...
,
Madlib Otis Jackson Jr. (born October 24, 1973), known professionally as Madlib, is an American DJ, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and rapper. He is widely known for his collaborations with MF DOOM (as Madvillain), J Dilla (as Jaylib), and Fr ...
, Pavement,
Prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. Th ...
,
Metallica Metallica is an American heavy metal band. The band was formed in 1981 in Los Angeles by vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, and has been based in San Francisco for most of its career. The band's fast tempos, instrume ...
,
Radiohead Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...
,
Modest Mouse Modest Mouse is an American rock band formed in 1992 in Issaquah, Washington, and currently based in Portland, Oregon. The founding members are lead singer/guitarist Isaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green, and bassist Eric Judy. Strongly influenced ...
, and
Wu-Tang Clan Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop group formed in Staten Island, New York City, in 1992. Its original members include RZA, GZA, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, and Masta Killa. Close affili ...
.


Notes

# The Village Voices
Winners
'' # Mike's
The Black and Blue Album
' # Biz's
Blackvillainy
' # K12 of 12-N-Dirty Productions
The Purple Album
' # Cheap Cologne's

' # DJ CooL Guy Presents: Jay-Z in
The Black Chamber
'


References

*


External links

*
The Grey Album
' at the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
*
The Grey Album
' at
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
*
The Grey Album
' on
Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grey Album, The 2004 remix albums Albums produced by Danger Mouse (musician) Danger Mouse (musician) albums Intellectual property activism Jay-Z remix albums Mashup albums Politics and technology Self-released albums The Beatles bootleg recordings The Beatles remix albums Unofficial remix albums