Graphic designer Ben Howell’s latest project has become a topic of interest online after creating an original mashup piece of singer Dua Lipa’s ‘Hallucinate’ and the BBC News theme tune.
The song remix became popular after BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast show presenter, Greg James, tweeted about it, saying: ‘Hi @BBCNews, Ben’s made you a new theme tune and it’s a certified banger. Please change with immediate effect. cc: @huwbbc, @BBCSimonMcCoy, @sophieraworth, @DUALIPA.’
Ben had just one humble goal with this music project – it was to convince his friends to let him bop to the BBC News theme tune at parties.
In an exclusive interview with Metro.co.uk, Ben explained: ‘It’s a bit of a strange one, it stemmed from the fact that I was already kind of obsessed with the BBC News theme tune, I tweeted that it’s a certified bop and I stand by that.’
He said, ‘I went to put it on at parties and my friends, some of them were into it and some of them rolled their eyes, so I thought if I could make it a bit more contemporary, maybe people will be willing to listen to it and I could get away with it.’
Ben added, ‘It became a running joke with my pals before lockdown when we would have some drinks, I would always sneak that into the queue of songs and everyone would know as soon as it came on, “right that was Ben that queued that one.” I am a fan of it!’
Ben spent four days piecing the Dua Lipa song ‘Hallucinate’ and the BBC News theme tune together from scratch.
‘Because I didn’t have any of the BBC stuff, any of the parts, I just had the acapella vocals…I thought I can build the rest of it using a keyboard, programming it in,’ he explained. ‘So piece by piece I built the BBC sounds around it and the more I worked on it, the more I had that feeling of, “Oh this is quite good!” I was quite chuffed by the time I finished, I think it worked quite well.”
The viral tune can be seen and heard on YouTube: youtu.be/skK3WoK5Z8A
