And yet, the song has been recorded by a few more artists while becoming a staple for singing competitions. Zeghibe’s video didn’t have any negative impact on Beyoncé, nor did the initial dust-up with Jean over “If I Were A Boy.” Her solo career had only grown since “Crazy In Love,” and in the last 10 years, she’s only become more influential as an artist.Īs such, no artist has been able to record a version of “If I Were A Boy” that has been more successful - be it commercially or critically - than hers. 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. If I can do it with a clip I pulled off of TV, imagine what they are doing on records and during live performances. I wanted to show people how easy it is to manipulate someone’s voice.
#BEYONCE IF I WERE A BOY SPANISH LYRICS SOFTWARE#
Beyoncé’s father and manager Matthew Knowles dismissed the video as “obviously altered,” and Beyoncé herself called it “ridiculous.” Turned out they were right indeed, Zeghibe had used pitch-correction software on the video. The cringeworthy, off-key video went viral after Howard Stern played it on his show. In November 2008, Beyoncé performed “If I Were A Boy” on “The Today Show.” In early 2009, a computer art student from Connecticut named Matthew Zeghibe uploaded a video of what he claimed was the real soundboard recording, before any editing or pitch correction had been applied to the performance. But then there was another controversy around the song. In the end, Jean got a $250,000 payout and a new record deal, and perhaps most importantly, she got her name listed in the songwriting credits. It was not my initial intention, but it’s opened so many doors, it’s amazing. This was my first cut ever I’ve never written for anybody else. It’s an amazing compliment, but I was like, “That’s great, but it’s going to be on my album!” And it can be on my album, too, I just didn’t realize how it worked.
I had always written for myself and was trying to get signed and do the whole artist thing as well. As she told The Hartford Courant:Īt first I was confused, because I never thought of myself as writing songs for other people. For starters, Jean knew nothing about Beyoncé knowing about the song (let alone recording it) until Gad called to tell her. In the UK, it reached Number 1.īut for all the good that this song brought Beyoncé, there were a few hiccups. “If I Were A Boy” peaked at Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. “If I Were A Boy” reached the top 10 on two dozen charts around the world. Within 30 minutes, they had written “If I Were A Boy.” Gad told Jean, “We just wrote a smash.” She listed a few things she would do, and because she was heartbroken from a recent breakup, she said, “I’d be a better man than my ex.” The two returned to the studio, where they used the dialogue from that recorded conversation to write some lyrics. Gad, who had his tape recorder with him, asked Jean what else she would do if she were a boy. But if she were a boy, she said, she could just eat the pizza without caring. Jean said that she really wanted some pizza, but because she was trying to not eat carbs, she didn’t think she should. Jean smelled some pizza, which caused her to say, “I wish I were a boy.” Gad, confused, asked her to elaborate. On a break from writing, they went to Times Square.
Over a week or so, they wrote several songs together. He invited her to come to New York City, where he was living at the time. Through MySpace, she met producer Toby Gad. Singer-songwriter BC Jean was 17 when she moved from San Diego to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music in the mid-2000s. You can listen to the songs in a Spotify playlist. Read about it here and see the list of previous songs here. A new post about a different song is posted each Monday. This is the 98th post in a weekly series.