Backlash after Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" removed from Billboard Hot Country chart

a clear and satisfying distinction between a 'meme' and a 'hit' in pop music has yet to come into focus for me. virtually all pop songs are aspiring memes.

I haven’t listened to the EP but it sucks that he and the label didn’t just go all in on “country trap” and throw him in a room with Nashville songwriters and big name beatmakers

Like an album of “ft. Pistol Annies, prod. MikeWillMadeIt” would obviously have a shelflife of like 12 months, but what a great 12 months it would be

Otm

totally

Def a missed opp

I don't particularly like "Old Town Road" so I didn't expect much from the EP and... it's meh imo.
I agree that it would have been more fun to go all the way with the country/hiphop trend and I was a bit surprised by the 90s rock style of some songs.
My main issue with him in general is that he seems bright and nice but he's a really mediocre singer/rapper and has no charisma whatsoever.

LNX with Maren Morris + Musgraves over an "In Bloom" simulation would've killed.

Where's Bubba Sparxxx now that clearly we need him more than ever?

haven’t heard the ep yet but i want to say that i disagree with this from the p4k review. Old town road is obviously a good song. not so bad it’s good or so good it’s bad; just good. i don’t know what it means for the song to be ‘aware it’s a meme’; it only became a meme because it is very good. i wasn’t ‘in on the joke’ and i don’t really think there is or was a ‘joke’

― flopson, Sunday, June 23, 2019 9:51 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

??? its clearly a parody of country music from a guy who played a lot of red dead redemption i think its obvi that theres a joke element to it

that paragraph to me is simply describing the intense alienation that comes from a song you dislike becoming absurdly popular; I felt an even stronger dislike of "Fuck You" by Cee Lo which was also one of those songs that felt pretty intensely "popular" in both the charts & critically (& on ILX) in a way that felt "critic proof" (ie it was a success and lots of ppl liked it & its effective therefor it is good)

i "lost" the argument abt this song (that it was in essence a parody rap) but I cant imagine ppl looking back on this the way we look back on like, crystal waters or "cmon ride the train." the last line of his review captures it for me ... "you had to be there"

it's hard to divine his intentions. flopson otm about it being a good song anyway

does that matter? xpost

the fact that it isn't serious doesn't disqualify OTR from being a good or even great song

no one is complaining that it isn't 'serious.' i compared it to 'cmon ride the train'

does that matter? xpost

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 24, 2019 11:05 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean... yes? what is this question

Unless I'm misreading you, why worry about posterity?

I dunno, posterity is a relatively good metric for quality.

yeah, when it's 2027, sure. But to speculate now on whether it will still get played/remembered like "Gypsy Woman" or "C'mon Ride the Train" is fruitless to me idk.

Also: some songs become such phenomena that liking or disliking them is irrelevant (e.g. "Macarena").

But I do understand the "intense alienation" of horrible songs becoming inescapable; we all do.

I like "Rodeo" as a sequel to "Old Town Road," but I wish Cardi would cut the swears for what is essentially children's music

Old Town Road went over huge at the bat mitzvah i went to this weekend, the kids were into it more than any other song. one woman at our table was asking loudly "why is he saying, going to take my horse to the old hotel, what's this song about?"

ITS ABOUT EQUINE PROSTITUTION GRAMMA ITS AN OLD COUTRY SONG YOU REMEMBER IT?

I mean as far as intention he is on record as saying he's trolling so ????

a lot of ppl on this supposedly forward-thinking rockist-critical forum would probably legit be turning their noses up at "c'mon and ride it" today, including those who actually liked it as kids. like do some of you ever get tired of being surly every time something goes big that betrays the general public's ignorance about the types of music that you enjoy, + pointing at other major-label artists who 'should' actually be receiving the attention and such

so much country music is self-parodic to the extent that it is seldom even remarked upon. nearly all the tropes of the idiom going back decades are mostly-fictional constructions stemming from the western-film conception of the cowboy

omg, this exists!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gUKEGuS20

it's the pomplamoose old town road/pony mash up america deserves!

PomplamooseMusic
Last night I had a dream that we were playing the Fillmore and half the room was singing “If you’re horny” and the other half was singing “I’m gonna take my horse,” and it was the greatest thing I’ve ever witnessed. Can we make this dream a reality? CAN WE????

oh my god i thought you were joking but it's actually fucking pomplamoose. amazing that all these years later they still haven't fucked off even after making their patreon(?) money

Supposedly the only Patreon money Pomplamoose guy gets and keeps is from his own account and the band's.

a lot of ppl on this supposedly forward-thinking rockist-critical forum would probably legit be turning their noses up at "c'mon and ride it" today, including those who actually liked it as kids. like do some of you ever get tired of being surly every time something goes big that betrays the general public's ignorance about the types of music that you enjoy, + pointing at other major-label artists who 'should' actually be receiving the attention and such

― dyl, Monday, 24 June 2019 20:43 (one hour ago) Permalink

you act like it was all "cmon ride the train" and not also rednex "cotton eyed joe"

also tbf my first exposure to this song was on tiktok & as ive said before if the song had first broken through those memes instead of billboard being dumb the popular response to this song would have been different imo

yes this song is popular because kids are bristling at the racism of billboard

my students hurled their phones across the room when they heard about Billboard's perfidy

hahahahahahahaha

the song *did* initially break thru those memes! it was #51, up from 86, on the hot 100 (and flying up the streaming charts -- it had virtually no airplay at this point) the week that billboard dropped it from the country chart. the billboard goof story, which went big after elias leight's rolling stone coverage not long after, did become a galvanizing point and part of its mythos, but the song was already broken wide open.

Had my kid play me this today. Not bad! She said it was a pretty fun song, but also good. Me, it reminded me of Everlast's "What It's Like," but that's fine, there are worse things.

that's a low blow

LOL, I figured I was not the first to make that comparison, but googling got next to nothing! Except this cat, who is actually pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wFt0uALc24

believe it or not, it is possible to like "old town road" while acknowledging that it is basically a meme

gonna come out of the closet as someone who actually enjoyed "what it's like". and "cotton-eye joe". i'm a lemming.

Pete Buttigieg is a noted fan of "What It's Like." I wonder what he thinks of "Old Town Road."

Oh boy:

Guys, Tim Ryan’s walk-up music is Old Town Road pic.twitter.com/xfNGnOmTLg

— Andy Burnstein (@thatburnstein) June 11, 2019

what little i know of pete buttigieg's music tastes seems so respectable-milquetoast-centrist so i take it back, i hate "what it's like"

yes this song is popular because kids are bristling at the racism of billboard

― VAR me to the end of yawn (jim in vancouver), Monday, June 24, 2019 5:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my students hurled their phones across the room when they heard about Billboard's perfidy

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 24, 2019 5:26 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahahahahaha

― space invaders are smokin penises!!!! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, June 24, 2019 5:28 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the song *did* initially break thru those memes! it was #51, up from 86, on the hot 100 (and flying up the streaming charts -- it had virtually no airplay at this point) the week that billboard dropped it from the country chart. the billboard goof story, which went big after elias leight's rolling stone coverage not long after, did become a galvanizing point and part of its mythos, but the song was already broken wide open.

― dyl, Monday, June 24, 2019 5:31 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These posts are dumb as fuck. It was in the hot 100 like literally 99 other songs at any given time but it was not a straight shot number one cross format smash that keeps legitimate stars off the number one for weeks at a time until it received blanket media coverage in the wake of a widespread report of curatorial injustice.

Like it wasn’t even top 40 off tiktok? There are probably 60 songs on the hot 100 right now a plurality if ilxors haven’t even heard

billy ray cyrus was more important than billboard

Billy Ray Cyrus doesn’t happen without billboard !!

Literally every media platform covered that story. It was like on local tv stations and shit