February 18, 2025
UK Art

The bizarre tale of Banksy’s fake Paris Hilton CD


Honestly, the lore of Banksy is unrivalled. Love him, hate him (or her?), there’s no denying the palpable impact that his work has had over so many cross sections of art and culture. Think of his musical collaborations, too – between Massive Attack, Gorillaz, and Stormzy, the calibre is strong. A long line of legends, and at the very height of them all… Paris Hilton?

The New York ‘It Girl’ and the enigmatic British street artist are admittedly an unlikely combination, but believe it or not, a crossover did happen. Well, of sorts – it probably didn’t go down too great with Paris.

The legend began with the release of Hilton’s stunning 2006 self-titled debut album. It did actually do pretty well, reaching number six in the American charts, but Banksy ended up stealing most of that thunder. For some inexplicable reason, he decided his next art canvas would be the Paris album and tampered with a select amount of the CDs released in the UK to include his own music and images.

Instead of the original cover, the Banksy-fied version pictured Hilton bare-chested, while in other photos of the model, her head was replaced with a dog’s. Buckle in, and it gets weirder yet. Not only this, but the tracks on the CD were altered, too – and this is where another collaboration gets added to the list. None other than Danger Mouse – not the one off of kids’ TV, the one that formed Gnarles Barkley – helped Banksy reproduce the album with their own tracks, changing the names to things like ‘Why Am I Famous?’, ‘What Have I Done?’, and ‘What Am I For?’. Of course, they couldn’t leave Hilton’s famous catchphrase alone either, with Danger Mouse’s voice cutting in whenever she uttered those two fateful words, “That’s hot!”

There were only around 400 to 500 of these hacked CDs ever made, and for obvious reasons, most of them were destroyed at the time it happened, so good luck trying to ever find one. Counterfeits of the counterfeits were even made, but you can tell which ones are the real deal because Banksy had the foresight to hand sign each of his works. But, naturally, it created more than a few headlines – and to this day still raises more questions than answers. So, why exactly did Banksy do it?

That one will largely come down to your own interpretation. Of course, the most obvious line of explanation comes down to an attack on the nature of Hilton’s fame itself, being what we’d now call a nepo baby, famous just for the sake of it. Equally, though, why was Hilton specifically the target? Yes, she would have been hitting the spotlight more often than not at the time, but that isn’t to say she was far from the only one. The imagery and objectification of Hilton in Banksy’s images reek of a fairly heavy dose of misogyny – something that the socialite would have aimed at her much of the time owing to the dumb blonde trope. There’s a lot to unpack, and maybe not as zany and shallow as we think, but that’s the very nature of art.

If you search long enough online, you can find a description of the piece – ‘Banksy vs Paris Hilton’, a rallying cry from the artist that he is somehow a man of the people. It gets even funnier when it lists the CD booklet’s dimensions and materials, which are acrylic and printed paper if you must know. Hang it in the Louvre.

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