Highlights
- The Hawk Tuah girl’s viral rise to fame started with an off-the-cuff remark and led to a viral video and podcast appearance.
- 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.
- Misheard lyrics like Haliey’s “concrete jungle wet dream tomato” are known as “mondegreens.”
Earlier this summer, the “Hawk Tuah” girl became insta-famous due to a viral video, and her subsequent comments about the lyrics to a Jay-Z song on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast have since gone viral, too.
In the unlikely event anyone, anywhere on Earth missed the Hawk Tuah girl’s abrupt rise to fame, we’ll recap.
Back in June, a young woman named Haliey Welch attended Nashville’s CMA Fest, fatefully running into content creators and answering a “man on the street” style interview question.
Haliey became known as “the Hawk Tuah girl” after her off-the-cuff and on the spot answer took off on social media:
“On June 11, [Haliey Welch]’s entire world changed when content creators Tim and Dee TV uploaded a social media video asking her ‘what’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?’
“She responded by saying ‘you gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thing, you get me?’
“Millions became obsessed with her after the footage was released.”
Haliey rose to global fame overnight, which landed her on Bill Maher’s podcast in late July — and during that appearance, she stumbled into another viral video situation.
Related
Bill Maher Called The Opposite Of Craig Ferguson Following His ‘Painful’ Hawk Tuah Interview
Bill Maher showed his age during a recent Club Random podcast episode alongside Hawk Tuah.
The Hawk Tuah Girl’s Version Of The Lyrics To ‘Empire State Of Mind’
On July 28, Bill Maher uploaded an episode of his podcast Club Random to YouTube, with Haliey Welch as a guest.
The episode was over an hour long, and on it, Bill and Haliey discussed a range of topics, including reality TV stars like the Kardashians, to whom Maher compared Welch.
Maher also likened Welch’s overnight fame to “the Beatles sweeping America” in the 1960s:
On July 30, Bill tweeted a now-viral excerpt of the interview, from a portion where he and Haliey discussed hip-hop music.
Then, on August 8, Young Verse shared the same part of the interview on Facebook.
That post racked up over 13 million views in under a day:
Text on the top of the video read “Now I can’t unhear it,” and the video itself depicted Maher and Welch’s conversation about her love of Taylor Swift, and his interest in hip-hop.
During the exchange, Haliey says she likes “old rap,” and Bill responds, saying 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 involving misheard lyrics:
[Haliey Welch]: “I’ve heard of both of them [Tupac and Jay-Z]. I just don’t listen to them like that … So there’s that one song Jay-Z’s in.
“He’s 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 what it sounds like, and that’s what I know it by.”
Anyone familiar with Jay-Z’s “Empire State Of Mind” lyrics would indeed recognize the song the Hawk Tuah girl referenced, as well as the “mondegreen” involved.
A “mondegreen” is a misheard and typically mis-repeated phrase, often resulting from words that are spoken or sung.
One classic example is Jimi Hendrix’s “excuse me, while I kiss the sky” being widely misheard as “excuse me, while I kiss this guy,” and another was mentioned by Maher — Credence Clearwater Revival’s lyric about a “bad moon on the rise” is frequently heard as “there’s a bathroom on the right.”
The word “mondegreen” is itself named after a mondegreen, due to a writer’s mishearing of “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen.”
In this case, the Hawk Tuah girl’s mondegreen was quite close to the actual lyrics for “Empire State Of Mind” — although it is hard to “unhear,” the line “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” does actually sound like “concrete jungle wet dream tomato.”
Club Random with Bill Maher (2022)
- Release Date
- March 9, 2022
- Main Genre
- Talk Show
- Cast
- Bill Maher
- Seasons
- 3