Novelty For Novelty's Sake

Once upon a time, say about 45 years ago, society underwent an unprecedented shift in what it found musically acceptable. I refer, of course, to The Beatles and their final act of manifest destiny in moving rock music into the mainstream. Specifically, 1968's The Beatles (A.K.A. - The White Album) moved musical mountains when it was released to the rock-hungry public. Though it was one of their last albums, it is certainly their most diverse (A.K.A. - eclectic) and surprising, given references to Baroque Era classical ('Piggies'), country-western ('Rocky Racoon'), and even ragtime ('Honey Pie'). Its 30 tracks run a staggering 93 minutes long, but somehow it wasn't overdone. It was tasteful and, more importantly, it made use of new musical techniques ('Revolution 9') and singlehandedly birthed a new sub-genre of rock ('Helter Skelter').

Once upon another time, only 5 years ago, Jay-Z released The Black Album to mounds of critical acclaim and hype because it was his "last studio album" (until 2006, when he predictably unretired and released another one). It may not have been as revolutionary as its juxtaposed predecessor, and it may not have even been original since no fewer than six albums were titled The Black Album before 2003, but it was good enough for Danger Mouse to find it worthy of a "mash-up" with said predecessor. And so, in 2004, with licensed a capella tracks from Jay-Z and pirated tracks from The Beatles, The Grey Album was distributed online through various file-sharing services and became an immediate and everlasting sensation (the oh-so-wise Entertainment Weekly even had the cojones to name it the "Best Album of 2004"). There's one problem, though: IT'S NOT GOOD.

Just doing something new for the sake of novelty does not automatically make it worthwhile. There is so much wrong about The Grey Album that I hardly know where to begin. It is terribly mixed, which is understandable since it was never officially released due to lawsuits (which resulted from the pirated Beatles tracks). Still, though, for people to heap so much praise on something as unproduced and rough-draftish as this is very telling as to how little attention is actually paid to quality when an album is revered simply for being "fresh."

What the album lacks in production quality, it does not make up for in substance. I do not consider myself any sort of expert on Jay-Z, but I do consider myself an amateur Beatles historian. I can often be an elitist or purist about things like the greatest band ever, so forgive me if I sound unforgiving, but I simply don't think that the slow, stringy sorrow of "Long, Long, Long" belongs within 100 yards of "Public Service Announcement" (a restraining-order-worthy offense), or that the undeniable classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" should even be mentioned in the same sentence as "What More Can I Say" (one of the worst efforts on Grey), let alone combined with it. The mash of "99 Problems" with "Helter Skelter" is the standalone quality track on the album, and only because Danger Mouse decided to use only two measures of "Helter Skelter" (the drum lead-in) to act as the beat behind Jay-Z's hook, "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one."

In the past I've often lauded artists for combining new and old styles (Feist's Let It Die) or returning to their musical roots (Radiohead's In Rainbows) or even reinventing themselves completely (Bright Eyes' Cassadaga), but the combination of White and Black into Grey is something that attempts to do all three and fails each time.

The purist in me says that The Beatles are at the root of all boundary-breaking pop/rock music that has been made since the mid-to-late 1960s, so Danger Mouse was making a daring attempt to connect one of the newest musical styles with the band that in some ways gave birth to it. By altering the work of either artist, he has rendered his efforts virtually pointless. Because of the distorted, slowed down, and sped up samples that he uses from The Beatles' tracks, he is essentially distorting the purpose of the entire project: an unadulterated combination of new and old, a return to the roots of contemporary music, and a reinvention of both The White Album and The Black Album.

Given these failures, the attempt to combine a timeless musical landmark with a new trend was an exercise in egotism and shock-value by Danger Mouse. He took two artists that are beloved by at least two generations of music lovers and tried to force them together like two random jigsaw pieces based solely on the fact that the latter's title is an allusion to that of the former. And, what's worse, it worked! He duped millions of people into thinking that The Grey Album is a masterwork of technological prowess, when in reality it was novelty for novelty's sake. He is the Howard Stern of mash-ups. It might seem impressive and even important on a superficial level, but if you take the time to listen -- to really listen -- it's impossible to avoid the clear conclusion that the standalone brilliance of each album should have remained just that.