The Grey Album

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See The Velvet Underground (album) and Beatallica (album) for eponymous albums often referred to as "The Grey Album".

Professional reviews
The Grey Album

Studio album (bootleg) by Danger Mouse
Released	2004
Genre	Hip hop, Mashup
Length	44:36
Label	Shoulin Records
Producer(s)	Danger Mouse
All Music Guide link NME (10/10) link Pitchfork Media (7.7/10) link Spin (A-) link Entertainment Weekly Grade: A link Entertainment Weekly 2004 Album of the Year link Metacritic (79/100) link
Danger Mouse chronology
DM & Jemini Ghetto Pop Life (2003)	The Grey Album (2004)	Gorillaz Demon Days (2005)

The Grey Album is an album by Danger Mouse released in 2004 (see 2004 in music). It uses an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z's The Black Album and couples it with instrumentals created from a multitude of unauthorized samples from The Beatles (more commonly known as The White Album). The Grey Album gained notoriety due to the response by EMI in attempting to halt its distribution.

1 History
- 1.1 Grey Tuesday
- 1.2 The Grey Video
2 Track listing
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The promotional artwork for the album was created by Justin Hampton. The album, which Danger Mouse released in limited quantities to a few outlets, created a massive amount of controversy when EMI, copyright holder of The Beatles, ordered Danger Mouse and retailers carrying the album to cease distribution. The amount of attention The Grey Album received caused EMI to act. Danger Mouse never asked permission to use The Beatles' material, and intended to produce a limited production run of 3,000 copies. Jay-Z's material, on the other hand, was commercially released in a cappella form. Although the work was copyrighted, it was released for the implicit purpose of encouraging mashups and remixes.

EMI's response to the album caused Downhill Battle, an activist group seeking to restructure the music industry, to start and lead a massive Internet-based protest dubbed "Grey Tuesday", to express the opinion that sampling is fair use and that a statutory license should be provided in the same manner as if a given song had been covered.

The album quickly became extremely popular and well-distributed over the Internet because of the surrounding publicity. It also came to the attention of the critical establishment; It received a very positive write-up in the February 9, 2004 issue of The New Yorker and was named the Best of 2004 in the music category by Entertainment Weekly. The Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics poll ranked the album 10th for 2004.[1]

The Grey Album is one of many The Black Album remix albums spurred by Jay-Z's release of the a cappellas. Producers Kno (from the Cunninlynguists) and Kevin Brown earlier had released their own color-themed remix albums, titled The White Al-bu-lum and The Brown Album respectively. The Internet distribution of The Grey Album spurred a series of copycat DJs and amateur mash-up artists to mix the a cappella version of The Black Album with a variety of other artists, including Weezer,^[2] Pavement,^[3] Prince,^[4] Metallica,^[5] and Wu-Tang Clan.^[6]

A reference to The Grey Album was made on the December 11, 2006 edition of The Colbert Report. During the show, host Stephen Colbert called for a mashup of The Beatles and Christmas songs to be named The White Christmas Album. He added, "Danger Mouse, I know you're watching."

[edit] Grey Tuesday

Grey Tuesday was a day of coordinated electronic civil disobedience on February 24, 2004. Led by Downhill Battle, on this day, participating websites posted copies of Danger Mouse's The Grey Album for free download on their sites for 24 hours in protest of EMI's attempts to prevent any distribution of this unlicensed work. This protest was provoked by the opinion that the sampling is fair use and that a statutory license should be provided in the same manner as if a song had been covered.

Supporters of the day claim that it signals a refusal by a vocal section of Internet society to let major label lawyers control musical creativity and specifically sampling. Sampling in music has been commonplace since the late 1980s, an early pioneering work was The Beastie Boys groundbreaking album Paul's Boutique in 1989 which used samples from sources as diverse as Johnny Cash, Bob Marley and The Beatles - the creators of the unlicensed music sampled on The Grey Album.

Hundreds of websites participated and roughly 170 hosted the album for download. The protest made the The Grey Album the number one album in the United States on the 24th^{[citation needed]}, with over 100,000 copies being downloaded on that day alone (more than 1 million individual tracks).

The legal repercussions of the protest were minimal; a number of the participants received cease and desist letters from EMI, but no charges were filed in connection with the event.

[edit] The Grey Video

The Grey Video is a music video made in the autumn of 2004 by directing team Ramon & Pedro to promote the single "Encore" from The Grey Album. An article from MTV's "Mixtape Monday" feature credits the video to Antoine Tinguely [7], and a French site mentions Tinguely as a member of Ramon & Pedro.[8] Tinguely was also listed as the only contact on the whois for the now defunct Grey Video site.[9].

The video, which is entirely in black and white, features clips from The Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night, and footage from a Jay-Z performance. It uses new footage and computer generated imagery to create scenes that involve John Lennon breakdancing and Ringo Starr scratching. It 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". John Lennon begins to sing while George Harrison and Paul McCartney nod their heads to the beat. After a few moments, the monitors in the director's booth begin to flicker, showing scenes of Jay-Z rapping "Encore" and the lyrics of the chorus begin to show behind group. Ringo'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". A John Lennon body double starts to breakdance, leading to a headspin. Paul and George are replaced by two dancers. "John" backflips off the screen, flinging his wig off. Ringo walks off and the lights fade to black.

The video is not available commercially, but has 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.

[edit] Track listing

"Public Service Announcement" – 2:45
- Samples "Long, Long, Long"
"What More Can I Say" – 4:25
- Samples "Top Billin'" by Audio Two
- Samples "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
"Encore" – 2:40
- Samples "Glass Onion" and "Savoy Truffle"
"December 4th" – 3:34
- Samples "Mother Nature's Son"
"99 Problems" – 4:06
- Samples "Helter Skelter"
"Dirt Off Your Shoulder" – 3:59
- Samples "Julia"
"Moment Of Clarity" – 4:00
- Samples "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"
"Change Clothes" – 4:04
- Samples "Piggies" and "Dear Prudence"
"Allure" – 4:06
- Samples "Dear Prudence"
"Justify My Thug" – 4:12
- Samples "Rocky Raccoon" and "Justify My Love" by Madonna
"Lucifer 9 (Interlude)" – 2:01 (Reveals a satanic message if played backwards, but was an intentional hoax by DJ Danger Mouse.)
- Samples "Revolution 9" and "I'm So Tired"
"My 1st Song" – 4:44
- Samples "Cry Baby Cry" and "Savoy Truffle" and "Helter Skelter"