“You can't shut up me”: The Grey Album as Adaptation

Abstract

Abstract The Grey Album, a 2004 mashup of The Beatles (1968) and The Black Album (2003). Danger Mouse, née Brian Joseph Burton, employs what Hutcheon deems a “participatory mode” to generate an “extended palimpsest” that simultaneously synthesizes its inspirations and creates an album distinct from both sources (33). Further complicating this process are the citations and parodies evident in the generative texts by both the Beatles and Jay-Z. As Danger Mouse reinscribes both The Beatles and The Black Album, so, too, did the Beatles and Jay-Z reimagine their “found” material. In this way, The Grey Album functions as an emblematic example of the cultural mutation and blending that Hutcheon, via Richard Dawkins, finds crucial to adaptation and that underscores the transgenerational persistence of certain archetypal kernels or memes. In mashing up the White and Black albums, then, Danger Mouse infuses both with fresh life by transporting a decades-old album into a vital new context.