Howard Stern Buys Beyonce Hoax by BFA Student Matthew Zeghibe
Matthew Zeghibe, BFA Student, School of New Media
As a freshman, Matthew Zeghibe — a star undergrad student from the School of Web Design + New Media — won the semi-finalist round in the Print Communications category of Adobe’s Design Achievement Awards in 2008.
This year, Matthew got a lot more press.
He created a music parody of Beyoncé for kicks, but a producer for Howard Stern saw it on YouTube, assumed it was real and then the story went viral. Since then he’s gotten coverage in Rolling Stone, BBC, Us magazine, Daily News, Softpedia and a handful of other publications.
According to the Rolling Stone interview, Matthew said: “I was just trying to make a point. I wanted to show people how easy it is to manipulate someone’s voice. If I can do it with a clip I pulled off of TV, imagine what they are doing on records and during live performances. The entire industry has been so manipulated, because there’s such an emphasis on perfection, so when something like this happens, it causes such a stir.”
The Rolling Stone story states that Beyoncé told MTV News that the timing of the video was perfect, “because I’ll be on the Today show tomorrow singing ‘Halo,’ [and] tonight, you can watch me sing live on David Letterman! It’s perfect promotion, whoever came up with that idea.”
Watch Matthew’s handiwork on YouTube.
