Highlights

• The Hawk Tuah girl’s viral rise to fame started with an off-hand remark and led to a viral video and an appearance on a podcast.
• Haliey Welch discussed hip-hop music on Bill Maher’s podcast and her funny misunderstanding of the lyrics of Jay-Z’s “Empire State Of Mind” also went viral.
• Misunderstood song lyrics like “Concrete Jungle Wet Dream Tomato” by Haliey are called “Mondegreens.”

Earlier this summer, the “Hawk Tuah” girl became a celebrity thanks to a viral video and her subsequent comments on the lyrics of a Jay-Z song on Bill Maher’s Instagram Club Random Podcasts have also gone viral since then.

In the unlikely event that anyone, anywhere in the world, missed the Hawk Tuah girl’s sudden rise to fame, we recap.

In June, a young woman named Haliey Welch attended CMA Fest in Nashville, happened upon content creators, and answered a man-on-the-street style interview question.

Haliey became known as “the Hawk Tuah girl” after her spontaneous response made waves on social media:

“On June 11, (Haliey Welch’s) whole world changed when content creators Tim and Dee TV uploaded a social media video asking her, ‘What move in bed makes a man go crazy every time?’

“She responded by saying, ‘You have to give them the ‘Hawk Tuah’ and spit on the thing, you understand?’

“Millions were obsessed with her after the footage was released.”

Haliey rose to global fame overnight, earning her a spot on Bill Maher’s podcast in late July—and during that appearance, she found herself in yet another viral video situation.

The version of the lyrics to “Empire State Of Mind” by The Hawk Tuah Girl

On July 28, Bill Maher uploaded an episode of his podcast Club Random on YouTube, with Haliey Welch as guest.

The episode lasted over an hour and featured Bill and Haliey discussing a variety of topics, including reality TV stars like the Kardashians, to whom Maher compared Welch.

Maher also compared Welch’s overnight fame to the Beatles’ “conquest of America” in the 1960s:

On July 30, Bill tweeted a now-viral excerpt from the interview in which he and Haliey talked about hip-hop music.

On August 8, Young Verse shared the same part of the interview on Facebook.

This post was viewed over 13 million times in less than a day:

The caption above the video read “Now I can’t forget” and the video itself showed the conversation between Maher and Welch about her love for Taylor Swift and his interest in hip-hop.

During the exchange, Haliey says she likes “old rap,” and Bill responds that he thinks Tupac Shakur and Jay-Z are “old rap.”

Haliey explains that she doesn’t listen to either artist, but adds that she likes a song by Jay-Z “about New York” in which he alludes to his collaboration with Alicia Keys: “Empire State Of Mind”:

What followed was an objectively hilarious conversation about misunderstood song lyrics:

(Haliey Welch): “I’ve heard of both of them (Tupac and Jay-Z). I just don’t listen to them that much… So there’s this one song that Jay-Z is on.

“He means something like ‘wet dream tomato from the concrete jungle’. 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 how I know it.”

Anyone familiar with the lyrics of Jay-Z’s “Empire State Of Mind” would actually recognize the song the Hawk Tuah girl was referring to, as well as the “Mondegreen” featured in it.

A “mondegreen” is a misheard and typically incorrectly repeated phrase that often results from spoken or sung words.

A classic example of this 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 mentioned by Maher – the Credence Clearwater Revival lyrics about an “evil moon rising” are often misheard as “There’s a bathroom on the right.”

The word “Mondegreen” is itself named after a Mondegreen, as one author misheard “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen.”

In this case, the Hawk-Tuah girl’s mondegreen was quite similar to the actual lyrics of “Empire State Of Mind” – although it’s hard to “unhear” it, the line “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” actually sounds like “concrete jungle wet dream tomato”.