Gregg Gillis, the artist better known as Girl Talk, pressed play on his laptop and a mass of teenagers clad in neon workout wear crowded the stage at Terminal 5 in Manhattan. The throng was so thick and the lamé so shiny that the fans overwhelmed Gillis’s performance for the first twenty minutes of his show, shouting every word to every clip that appeared in his mash-ups, as if they themselves were the main act.

But Gillis regained control of the stage with his signature sweatsuit striptease, even ripping off the arm of his jacket to use as a headband. Things then took a turn for the awesome when gigantic cheeseburgers flew above a bed of french fries on the screen behind the stage. After cheeseburgers came flying laptops, flying hundred dollar bills, and flying pictures of Obama on the cover of TIME.

Gillis mostly played songs from his latest album, Feed the Animals, which, if you don’t have it already, is available on a “pay what you wish” basis from the Illegal Art website. The biomedical engineer-turned-mash-up artist has developed a reputation from his previous three albums for reintroducing pop music to the masses and making it so good they can’t help but dance. The new album is no exception. He mashes Avril Lavigne, Busta Rhymes, and Kelly Clarkson in a way that even the musical elite can get down to. “I want to make new pop out of old pop,” he has said. “I’m not trying to be subversive. I’m celebrating Top 40 as the soundtrack to many people’s lives.”

Gillis’s shows are nothing if not egalitarian. It’s a beautiful thing to see club kids and college kids come together on the dance floor and forget their differences in the words, “I love having sex, but I’d rather get some head.” To end the night, he jumped up on a table next to his laptop and swung the microphone back and forth like a sledgehammer. For four minutes. The music carried on but Gillis, bright with sweat, seemed miles away, caught in a trance that ended only when he picked up his laptop, wielded it like a guitar, and shredded the last beat of the night.

Photos of Girl Talk at Terminal 5.

KEYWORDS: DJ, Girl Talk, Mash-Up, Music

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