The Grey Album
The Grey Album is a mashup album 2004 posted by Danger Mouse on which the a cappella versions of songs by Jay -Z's The Black Album mixed with the instrumental versions of the songs on the White Album by the Beatles. The album was known as EMI wanted to stop it from spreading.
History
Publication
The acapellas from Jay -Z's The Black Album were separately sold the album was released as a so -called Jay -Z Construction Set to allow remixes and mash- ups. While Jay -Z was still assignee of the songs, but tolerated the retransmission. EMI, rights holders of the Beatles songs, but forbade any unauthorized re-use of the title. The album was distributed in 2004 after a production time of two weeks in an edition of 3000 copies in a few selected shops and quickly enjoyed some fame, so that EMI was forced to act and only Danger Mouse and then the stores that offered the album an injunction had come.
This album became even more famous and spread within a few days in large quantities on the internet. The traditional press took up the issue and reported it. So a very positive review appeared in the New Yorker in the issue dated 9 February 2004. Entertainment Weekly called it "the best album in 2004 ," Rolling Stone " an ingenious hip-hop album, which is his time in a strange way ahead " and the Boston Globe ," the most creatively captivating album of the year ".
Grey Tuesday
In response to the injunction by EMI called Downhill Battle, a non- profit organization, which campaigns for a restructuring of the music industry, 24 February 2004 Tuesday of Grey. As an act of "electronic civil disobedience ", the album was one day offered to participate in this action filled gray web pages to download and thus against EMI's attempt to stop the spread protests. It was required that the sampling of a song of the U.S. copyright doctrine of fair use is subject to and a cover is to be equated.
Nearly 170 websites participated in the action and offered the album to download. About 150 of these sites then received injunctions from EMI, but no fines were imposed. On this day alone The Grey Album has been downloaded over 100,000 times. The album has since become available on countless websites still and will continue to spread via P2P networks.
Title list
The individual songs are named after a song on The Black Album, but in a different order than on the original. Indicated are, what songs of the White Album will be sampled in it.
- Used Long, Long, Long
- Used Glass Onion and Savoy Truffle
- Used Mother Nature's Son
- Used Helter Skelter
- Used Julia
- Used Happiness Is a Warm Gun
- Used Piggies and Dear Prudence
- Used Dear Prudence
- Rocky Raccoon used
- Cry Baby Cry used, Savoy Truffle and Helter Skelter