At 5:43 p.m. on Tuesday evening, Danny Michelson could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Girl Talk was finally coming to Penn State -- officially.

After months of rumors, stressful contract negotiations and multiple premature Facebook events that advertised the show before it was even made official, musician Gregg Gillis, better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is finally slated to perform at 10 tonight in Alumni Hall at the HUB-Robeson Center. To sweeten the deal, this show -- considered by some to be the biggest show of the semester -- is free. No tickets required.

Michelson (junior-film), vice president of Students Organized for the Multiple Arts (SOMA), faced many challenges in booking the artist, including cost, the time of the event, sound set-up and contract negotiations.

"Oh God, what wasn't a challenge?" Michelson said. "Contracts were a big problem with us, mailing them back and forth between the agency. But it all seemed to work out and we are good to go."

Alex Augustyniak (sophomore-engineering), an officer for SOMA, also felt the fatigue of trying to secure Girl Talk for a performance.

"As far as planning among the officers, it's definitely been one incident after another," Augustyniak said. "With many of our past shows it's been as simple as keeping contact with the band but ... everything from the price of the show to the date to specific items in the contract were causing hang-ups. It's hectic but it's coming together."

Gillis, a native of Pittsburgh and an ex-biomedical engineer-turned-musician, seems to be widely considered by music fans to be a mash-up/remix artist, which is a DJ who combines different song elements to create a sum that is drastically different from its parts. However, Gillis does not consider himself to be a "mash-up artist" or even a DJ, for that matter.

"For me, I've never even considered myself a DJ in the traditional sense," Gillis said. "I want to make music that references the past ... but is transformative enough that it becomes a new entity. And I think that's the goal of any musician whether you're doing classical music or reggae or whatever. It's all about taking these pre-existing ideas, re-contextualizing them and hopefully putting them in a new light enough so that they seem original and new. I think that's a foundation of all art and music."

Fans have been responding to Gillis' reinterpretation of pop music in droves. Feed the Animals, Gillis' fourth album, has been named No. 4 in Time magazine's top 10 albums of the year as well as scoring an 81/100 on metacritic.com, a Web site that takes a weighted average of critics' grades.

Augustyniak said he has listened to mash-up music before, but he finds a distinct difference with Gillis' approach.

"No one has ever really taken it to the level Gregg Gillis has," Augustyniak said. "Instead of just combining two songs or taking the beat of one song and the vocals of another like so many mash-up artists do, he takes literally dozens of samples per track and weaves them together and ... he really creates a snapshot of pop music in a way that no other artist really has."

Michelson goes so far as to compare Girl Talk to his own organization, SOMA.

"In a way, he's a lot like SOMA. SOMA likes to combine different arts and kind of mash them together into really cool interesting events," Michelson said. "He takes songs that normally wouldn't go together, puts them together in his own unique way and makes them his own."

Some Penn State students responded prematurely to the rumors of Girl Talk's show with hasty Facebook events. Last Friday, Dec. 5, Joe Edelsack (sophomore-psychology) created one of the Girl Talk-related Facebook events that advertised the show before all the details were solidified. SOMA eventually requested Edelsack take down his event , but the damage had already been done.

"I wanted to see if there was any interest beyond my circle of friends and clearly there was. It went from about 40 people attending to 564 people in 24 hours and some of that was my doing and some of it wasn't," Edelsack said. "I had originally heard about it through the fundraising they were doing, so I figured it was a fairly definite thing. But, at the time I was unaware there was still a possibility that it wasn't going to happen."

Luckily, Gillis is no stranger to do-it-yourself shows that sometimes prove to be difficult to set up. Gillis said he appreciates not only SOMA's involvement, but students at any college that take the time to organize events such as this.

"It's fantastic. I definitely have a good idea of all sides of this basic thing, just how dark and crazy and shitty it can get, and also how awesome it can be. I've spent so many years playing shows to nobody and basically begging people to come out, and having horrible show after horrible show," Gillis said. "I've been around that a lot, so when I get to play a college and ... there's a lot of people putting in the effort to come out, you know, it always means a lot to me."

One might wonder how exactly a live show featuring someone who manipulates other artist's songs might work. The idea of someone standing onstage with a laptop may initially sound a bit uneventful. However, those who have experienced it firsthand, like Edelsack, know there is more to a Girl Talk show than just one man and his laptop.

"It's like the most fun party you've ever been to but could never have," Edelsack said. "It's sweaty, it's dirty, it's raw, it's fun and there's just a good vibe generating throughout the crowd."

Some detractors might say there is no difference between playing his CD and being at one of Girl Talk's shows, but Gillis explains it isn't as simple as that.

"With the shows, I like to do re-interpretations. Like, with the past two albums, I'm sure people are fairly familiar with them, so I like to take elements from those albums and do remixes of those remixes," Gillis said. "For me, the album and the shows influence each other, but they're definitely different worlds. I think the shows are a bit more functional and ... it's more loose. It's more about the celebration and partying and not about sitting down and trying to process this album."

Another staple of a Girl Talk show is Gillis' interaction with the audience; specifically, letting the fans up on the stage to dance along side him, Augustyniak said. He added that the HUB wishes to "de-emphasize" that portion of the show, but he also mentioned Gillis is no stranger to mixing it up with the crowd, whether it be through crowd surfing or running out onto the floor.

"From the videos I've seen and ... from what I've heard from people in our group who have seen him, it's going to be a wild and crazy dance party," Augustyniak said.