Long Island native, roommate to compete on 'Beat Shazam'

A financial-technology HR executive born and raised on Long Island tries to name that tune before the titular song-identification app does on the season 7 premiere of Fox’s “Beat Shazam,” Tuesday at 8 p.m. on WNYW/5.

Describing herself, and her roommate and show teammate Holly Sigmon as “elder millennials,” 40-year-old Helen Galarza says the two “are so consumed with the music of the ’80s and ’90s. That's how we bond, that's how we get along. We sit down at home and watch music videos and listen to music all the time. It's always loud at our place” in Brooklyn. “... We’ve binge-watched ‘Beat Shazam,’ the two of us going, ‘We’ve got to be on that show! We absolutely would crush this!’ ”

Hosted by Oscar winner Jamie Foxx and his producer-activist daughter, Corinne Foxx, “Beat Shazam” pits two-person teams against each other and the clock as they attempt to identify popular songs. The winning team then tests its mettle against the app Shazam for the chance to win $1 million.

As a bonus, “Beat Shazam” shoots at Ardmore Studios in Bray, Ireland, so contestants get a free trip to the Emerald Isle. “It was amazing,” says Galarza, who was born in Mineola and raised in Hempstead. “I've actually been to Ireland quite a few times, so I was, like, ‘My other motherland! Great!’ ”

Galarza’s roots lie in El Salvador. Her mother, Elsa Diaz, emigrated from there some 50 years ago, Galarza says, “and landed in Roslyn, where she was a young au pair. The family she worked for helped her learn English and kind of understand life in America.” Galarza, whose parents broke up when she was a toddler, is the youngest of her mother’s four children, the rest being her half siblings. They joke of her, she says, chuckling, “that I’m an only child!”

Always a music lover, Galarza sang choir at Jackson Main Elementary in Hempstead. Later, at Hempstead High School, “I played the flute in marching band, and I was a percussionist in the jazz band.” As a senior, she also was co-editor of the yearbook. Galarza graduated Queens College with a bachelor’s degree in media studies in 2006.

After various jobs, she broke into human resources in 2017 and is now the people operations manager at OpenFin.

On “Beat Shazam,” she’s teamed with her roommate of nearly a dozen years. Sigmon, who works as a personal assistant, “used to work at a retail store with me,” Galarza recalls. “I was living with my parents on Long Island and she had a terrible roommate who wouldn't pay rent, and she finally kicked him out. And when she came to work that day, she sort of flung me the keys and she said, ‘Hey, are you in?’ ”

The two have “kind of become a marriage since then,” Galarza quips. “She cooks and she is responsible and she's funny, and we just have such a blast together.” Indeed, Sigmon also is friends with Galarza’s girlfriend, who works in strategic financial planning. The girlfriend jokes that she and Galarza can’t break up “because then she would have to divorce Holly, too!”