Highlights
- The Hawk Tuah girl's viral fame started with an off-the-cuff comment and led to a viral video and podcast.
- Haliey Welch discussed hip-hop music on Bill Maher's podcast and her funny misunderstanding of Jay-Z's “Empire State Of Mind” lyrics also went viral.
- Misunderstood lyrics like Haliey's “concrete jungle wet dream tomato” are known as “mondegreens”.
Earlier this summer, the “Hawk Tuah” girl rose to insta-fame after a viral video and her subsequent comments about the lyrics of a Jay-Z song on Bill Maher's Club Random podcasts have also gone viral.
In the unlikely event that anyone, anywhere in the world, missed the Hawk Tuah girl's sudden rise to fame, let's recap.
In June, a young woman named Haliey Welch attended CMA Fest in Nashville, where she happened to run into some content creators and answered an interview question that you would normally ask on the street.
Haliey became known as “the Hawk Tuah girl” after her spontaneous and direct response went viral on social media:
“On June 11th, [Haliey Welch]The world changed when the content creators, Tim and Dee TV, posted a video on social media asking her: 'What's the best move in bed that drives a man crazy every time?'
“She replied, 'You have to give them that 'hawk tuah' and spit on that thing, you know?'
“Millions of people became obsessed with her after the images were released.”
Haliey became world famous overnight and ended up on Bill Maher's podcast in late July. During that performance she ended up in another viral video.
Related
Bill Maher is being called the opposite of Craig Ferguson after his 'painful' Hawk Tuah interview
Bill Maher showed his age during a recent episode of the podcast Club Random with Hawk Tuah.
The Hawk Tuah Girl's version of the lyrics of 'Empire State Of Mind'
On July 28, Bill Maher uploaded an episode of his podcast Club Random to YouTube, with Haliey Welch as guest.
The episode lasted over an hour and featured Bill and Haliey discussing a range of topics, including reality TV stars like the Kardashians, to whom Maher compared Welch.
Maher also compared Welch's sudden fame to “the Beatles taking America by storm” in the 1960s:
On July 30, Bill tweeted a clip of the now-viral interview, a portion of which featured him and Haliey discussing hip-hop music.
On August 8, Young Verse shared the same portion of the interview on Facebook.
That post was viewed more than 13 million times in less than a day:
The video is headlined with the words, “Now I can't unhear it.” The video itself features Maher and Welch talking about her love for Taylor Swift and his interest in hip-hop.
During the conversation, Haliey says she likes “old rap,” to which Bill replies that he considers Tupac Shakur and Jay-Z to be “old rap.”
Haliey explains that she doesn't listen to either artist, but adds that she likes a Jay-Z song “about New York,” referencing his collaboration with Alicia Keys, “Empire State Of Mind”:
What followed was an objectively hilarious conversation with misunderstood song lyrics:
[Haliey Welch]: “I have heard of both [Tupac and Jay-Z]. I just don't listen to it that much… So there's this one song that Jay-Z is on.
“He says something like, ‘concrete jungle wet dream tomato.’ You know, about New York.”
[Bill Maher]: “Uh, wet dream tomato?”
[Haliey Welch]: “That's not really what [“Empire State Of Mind”] says, but that's how it sounds, and that's how I recognize it.”
Anyone familiar with the lyrics to Jay-Z's “Empire State Of Mind” will recognize the song the Hawk Tuah girl was referencing, as well as the word “mondegreen.”
A “mondegreen” is a misheard and often misrepeated phrase, often the result of words being spoken or sung.
A classic example is Jimi Hendrix's “excuse me, while I kiss the sky” which is often misheard as “excuse me, while I kiss this guy”. Another example was cited by Maher: Credence Clearwater Revival's lyric about a “bad moon on the rise” is often heard as “there's a bathroom on the right”.
The word “mondegreen” itself was named after a mondegreen, because a writer misheard “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen.”
In this case, the Hawk Tuah girl's mondegreen came pretty close to the actual lyrics of “Empire State Of Mind” – while it's hard to “unhear” it, the line “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” actually sounds like “concrete jungle wet dream tomato.”
Club Random with Bill Maher (2022)
- Release date
- March 9, 2022
- Main genre
- Talk show
- Form
- Account Maher
- Seasons
- 3