Part 2: The Album

Building on his interest in remixing, Burton selected two albums for a new, more comprehensive remixing project: The White Album by The Beatles, and The Black Album by Jay-Z. The White Album was the unofficial title for The Beatles’ self-titled 1968 album, featuring the song “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” The Black Album was released in 2003, contemporary to Burton’s own time. Specifically, Burton was interested in an a capella version of the The Black Album, which Jay-Z had released simultaneously, and which he specifically intended for other musicians to use in remixes.

This is the song, "Glass Onion" from The Beatles' White Album.

This is the song, "Encore" from Jay-Z's The Black Album. 

Burton mixed both albums together—using lyrics from Jay-Z’s album and instrumental components from The Beatles, and he began circulating the tracks in demo form under the title The Grey Album. He eventually pressed close to 3,000 copies and, in the first few weeks of 2004, began sending them to music reviewers and others, nominally as an act of self-promotion (Patel, 2004).

“The Grey Video” was made in 2004 by directing team Ramon & Pedro. It combines "Glass Onion" and "Encore" with video clips from A Hard Day's Night and concert footage from Jay-Z.

It worked. Indie music publications like Pitchfork reviewed the album as if it were a professionally-released CD from a record company (Pemberton, 2004). Bootleg mp3 copies began circulating online, with tens of thousands of copies downloaded. While some publications were reviewing the album as music, others were writing about broader implications. Large magazines like The New Yorker and Wired wrote about the album and its reception as a copyright, legal and cultural issue, instead of reviewing it as an album of music (Greenman, 2004; Shachtman, 2004).

Go to Part 3: The Critics.