Feed The Animals

Girl Talk

2008

3.25

Rating

Votes

11%

19%

28%

19%

23%

Distribution

Genres: Electronica, Hip Hop Styles: Rock And Roll, Pop Rock, Indie Rock, Freestyle, Breaks, Instrumental, Gangsta, Plunderphonics

User Submitted Album

View Submitter's Profile

Album Summary

Feed the Animals is the fourth studio album by American musician Gregg Gillis, released under his stage name Girl Talk by Illegal Art on June 19, 2008. Illegal Art originally released the album as a digital download through their website using a "pay what you want" pricing system. Like much of his previous work, Gillis composed Feed the Animals almost entirely using samples of other artists' music and minor elements of his own original instrumentation. Gillis stated that with Feed the Animals, he wanted to produce an album "you can sit down, relax, and listen to over and over again, finding out new things", in contrast with the fast-paced, frenetic nature of his live performances. Feed the Animals builds on the mashup format of previous Girl Talk albums, with Gillis using over 300 samples of music by other artists to compose the album's fourteen tracks. He produced the album as one long piece of music, which was then subsequently broken into individual songs. Gillis felt that the album "works towards a bigger whole" and initially considered releasing the album as a single piece without track divisions, but ultimately decided against the idea, as he felt that "the end of the album would get so neglected, and if your favorite moment was a 30-second bit at the 40-minute mark, it would be really annoying to have that."

Reviews

Sort by: Popular Date Random

Rating: All 5★ 4★ 3★ 2★ 1★

Length: All Short Long

Mar 02 2026 Author

Though a historical indie landmark, Girl Talk’s brand of sampling hasn’t aged well. There’s a pretty clear line in sampling between creating something wholly unique/new out of a million recognizable pieces (The Avalanches, Justice, Boards of Canada) vs. the wholesale recontextualization of entire songs going on here. Familiar pieces are presented with a winking nod and thrown together for 30 seconds at a time, making the LP feel like a speed run of “remember this?” in the vein of Ready Player One. It would play well as a DJ mix or on the dance floor, but as a listening experience it’s just exhausting and hard to endure. Less novel artistic product and more tired relic of the aughts in my opinion.

Mar 02 2026 Author

5er - coming from an aspiring DJ, this is greatness.

Mar 06 2026 Author

Hiphop meets Rock merged together for one seemless sampled album. Hyped!

Mar 07 2026 Author

I fuck so hard with Girl Talk going on like 18 years now

Mar 07 2026 Author

The brief period of time where mashups ruled the word were good Obama era dancing carefree days. Girl Talk always a champ and it still rules. Always catch a new sample on a relisten

Mar 08 2026 Author

This album was a bit of a conundrum for me… the mix was pretty darn incredible - I heard everything from ? And the Mysterions to Radiohead to The Carpenters to Nine Inch Nails to Kelly Clarkson and pretty much any other pop music you might imagine. My initial inclination was to lower the rating because this is music built largely from samples. But it was so masterfully mixed it was constantly putting a smile on my face and was perfect accompaniment to my workout. The title of this list is “1001 Albums to Listen to Before You Die” - not the 1001 best albums of all time or the best new original music or whatever… so thinking about the theme I’m very happy to recommend listening to this before you die. Maybe the artist isn’t using traditional instruments to create songs, but the mixing artistry and incredible expanse of material being sampled does merit a strong listen to this recommendation!

Mar 09 2026 Author

Takes me back to my younger days. Kind of hasn’t aged all that well, but it’s so stacked with memories that it’s a 5 for me.

Mar 13 2026 Author

Trodde aldrig att jag skulle ge en platta med den här typen av musik högsta betyg. Men det här är kul. Sen är det i och för sig samplingar av andra låtar som gör albumet.

Mar 19 2026 Author

An eclectic mix/mash-up of way too many samples and way too many genres, but somehow sounds wonderfull. Any moment you can try to define where a particular sound comes from. Or to guess what will come next. Girl Talk is a master in what he does 5*mm

Mar 01 2026 Author

Really fun to listen to actually. Esoecoslly after the 1001 list damn Paranoid android on set it off is worth it all

Mar 03 2026 Author

A modern day Jive Bunny!

Mar 10 2026 Author

Pure sugar and I was happy to listen to it. Can't believe there hasn't been a new album since 2010.

Feb 27 2026 Author

Nice to hear a mashup that isn’t super modern

Mar 05 2026 Author

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: Like This

Mar 10 2026 Author

This is a perfectly enjoyable to listen to series of mashups. But is it an album? That I'm not sure about.

Mar 11 2026 Author

Rap vocals over a classic song… an evergreen combo

Mar 12 2026 Author

It's come up before on this list that I'm really not a fan of mash-up. I know I'm on the wrong side of history on this one and there are artistic counter-arguments going as far back as you care to look for them. Really its all mash-up blah blah blah. Whatever: I continue to feel like better than 9 times out of 10 whatever I'm liking in this kind of thing, I liked better in its sources: the virtue is fully borrowed. A whole lot of this is the single trick of running rap lines over classic instrumental bits from pop classics. Ooh critical insight: the opening hook from Billie Jean is catchy.

Mar 16 2026 Author

Very impressive sample albums flows very well and some real classics in there.

Mar 17 2026 Author

I started it with a clear NO, but it was kinda fun to listen to. Mashup album: what a concept!

Mar 06 2026 Author

Mashup, plunderphonics. Refrito de canciones totalmente innecesario. Un 1.

Mar 10 2026 Author

It takes a special talent to ruin classic songs this badly, and this proves it in record time. What’s pitched as a “celebration” of pop history is really just dumpster fire of chopped-up hooks, smashed together with the subtlety of a car crash. Instead of clever mashups, you get a relentless barrage of samples with a thick layer of piss poor rapping..

Mar 15 2026 Author

It's like Jive Bunny lying on his back, naked, and pissing all over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A crass, tasteless, but admittedly very impressive achievement.

Mar 17 2026 Author

In my review of The Avalanches’ “Since I Left You”, I lamented that the plunderphonics label got applied to their music, because it implies they’re doing something recklessly, with a disregard for history and lack of grace. This record, to me, is plunderphonics. Lifting big chunks of songs, smashing them together without doing much to augment them or bring something new to the table.