Sometimes, in this digital age, it can be hard to think up what presents to get for people. What about a personalised message from their favourite singer though? Lovely! That’s what Colin Peppard of the band Post-Party did for his bandmate Matthew O’Reilly.
Peppard explained in a video on TikTok that he’d been scrolling through Cameo – the service where fans can pay for personalised video messages from celebrities – and discovered that The 1975’s Matt Healy was on there. Perfect, he thought, O’Reilly loves Matt Healy. What could be better? Especially as they’re just about to go and see The 1975 perform live.
“I went on Cameo, as you do, to look at the options”, explains Peppard. “And suddenly, Matt Healy shows up, and I’m like, ‘No way he’s doing Cameos for $75’. I was like, ‘That is wild. That is wild’. So I jump at it, just go bam, bam, bam, type in a message – I’m like, ‘I need to get this as soon as possible before it isn’t real anymore’”.
“A couple of days later, I receive this”, he adds, before revealing that in his haste he’d actually paid for a message from Matt Heafy, frontman of metal band Trivium. “So yeah, enjoy Matthew Heafy from the band Trivium give the nicest message anyone has ever received on Cameo”.
He then shared the video, which is indeed very nice, and in which Heafy runs through a list of the things the two friends both share in common, while also mentioning the upcoming gig they will be attending together.
The key to this being that Heafy is clearly not aware that he was not the singer who was expected to be delivering this message. His band is also touring Europe at the moment, meaning the request to mention of an upcoming show in the message didn’t raise any red flags.
Don’t worry though, Heafy isn’t just a nice guy when people are paying him to be. After Peppard’s video went viral, he shared the mea culpa on his own Instagram profile in good humour.
“This made my day”, he wrote. “Thank you to Stereogum for tagging me in Post-Party’s video about a Cameo that was meant for Matt Healy”.
What is the moral of this story? Read people’s names very carefully. Or don’t, and you might have found a new way to help people discover your own band.