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

I think people are conflating ubiquity among adults and ubiquity among kids, and it is resulting in a lot of talking past one another

in other words, if you want to know whether any given viral/tiktok/streaming sensation has traction among the kids, then ask a kid whether he's heard of them and not a 30-year-old

also maybe a bit of confusing adult-mediated spaces (the people deciding which songs are OK to play in elementary school are... not kids, nobody is a goofy movie-ing the kindergarten assembly) with ones that aren't

how many people on ILX can honestly tell me they've heard Sech's Otro Trago, the current #7 song on the Spotify charts?

that's #7 on the global charts. currently number 7 on the us spotify chart is...old town road remix by lil nas x ft. billy ray cyrus

can't nobody tell an ilxor nothing

how many of you have actually *seen* the memes that were on tiktok driving its popularity at this point?

I was there . . . on TikTok . . . when the memes were pushing “Old Town Road” to #1. I waaaaaas there . . .

a relatively minor example of this is if you play that one yoshi's island level song for equally online 30-year-olds and 13-year-olds and ask them what they think of first, playing yoshi's island or watching the meme that goes with it now

My kids have been listening to "9 to 5" a lot lately, I assume that is a Tik Tok meme as well.

Man, I loved “9 to 5” when I was in fifth grade (really). Fixated on the image/non-image of “pour myself a cup of ambition.”

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...

Attack ships taking the yeehaw challenge off the shoulder of Orion...

https://www.academia.edu/9528618/The_Social_World_of_Young_People

In enough depth and with enough sophistication to recognize that the reason he was probably kicked off the country charts was because he was black.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, June 26, 2019 2:14 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark

there are black artists on the country charts.....

12 year olds... not that sophisticated

Its really funny because if Lil Nas was really because of Billboard outcry, that means this guy's other Twitter thread is responsible for the biggest song in America

https://www.thedailybeast.com/viral-twitter-hoax-creator-shane-morris-starts-gofundme-to-hide-from-ms-13

For a bunch of ostensibly smart ppl who read writing you guys have a very strangely dismissive attitude towards the power NARRATIVES have to propel a story. It’s not just that the song got blanket coverage (yes it really did) but that it did so w a narrative that resonated w a vast number of people (including, yes, children)

i don't think anyone has mentioned that the tiktok memes around this song were HILARIOUS and basically the same as for harlem shuffle except that instead of everybody suddenly wilding out on the drop it was kids suddenly attired in cowboy gear for the verse, in a delicious reflection of the song's dual identity as urban and rural. it really was amazing and endlessly repeatable. and also feels a million years ago now. but the song itself, bridgeless, under 3 minutes ("a great pop song should be 2:50!!" - p townshend), is somehow sturdy enough to sustain it, to hold up to all those replays. it's impressive. of course a bit of coverage by the intelligentsia helps, all coverage helps.

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 18:25 (two hours ago) Permalink

There’s been a lot of preposterous shit written in this thread but nothing quite so ridiculous as a contention that the old town road yee haw juice memes were not insanely lame and uncool

hahahahahahaha

There’s been a lot of preposterous shit written in this thread but nothing quite so ridiculous as an expectation that most of a bunch of adults are fully aware of what old town road yee haw juice memes were let alone whether they were cool or insanely lame and uncool

Lol I questioned that adults knew those memes up thread & got clowned for that you guys need to get on the same page

What is more powerful than a story? I give you your new king Old Town Road the Broken first of his name

is this a good time to say we should probably admit that deej was right about Chief Keef super influential on the direction rap was headed?

Guys, he dropped Panini. Why are you still arguing about how Old Town Road went viral?

Played "Panini" at dinner tonight (appropriately enough). My kids and wife hadn't heard it yet, or even heard of it, and immediately put on Old Town Road instead. I asked my 12-year old if she thought Old Town Road was more of a good song or more of a Who Let the Dogs Out type song, and she immediately lit up and said "oh, Who Let the Dogs Out, for sure!" And my wife added that the song has been a thing at work for a month. I just only time will tell if it has the staying power of Who Let the Dogs Out. The more immediate question is how long until it shows up in the trailer for an animated kids movie.

It's in the trailer for the new Rambo movie, it's well on the way.

very very few songs get to 12 weeks at number one--it's gonna stick around, and it's gonna make a comeback when those elementary school students grow capable of nostalgia.

i'd say it's less a 'who let the dogs out' and more an 'all star'

opening on miley's 2043 comeback tour

Get reading for Homecoming 2020!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O14xb3cJ6rw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b07-yKnKRMQ

Every generation gets the Wanted: Dead or Alive it deserves

It’s not just that the song got blanket coverage (yes it really did) but that it did so w a narrative that resonated w a vast number of people (including, yes, children)

I'm skeptical about the first part of this, but understand that it depends on how you define "blanket" and the media you consume. Obviously, it was covered by a lot of big outlets.

But I just don't believe the second part of this is true. I live in a very regular-ass, medium-sized American town, and I think if you walked around and asked 10,000 people here if (a) they know the song, and (b) they know the Billboard narrative, most would answer yes to (a) and 95+% would answer no to (b).

I’m loath to defend the viewpoint of someone who can’t see value in Yee Haw Juice memes, but I think it’s entirely possible to believe that the Billboard Thinkpiece Debate aspect of “Old Town Road” is a minor plank in its current massive platform while also acknowledging that it played a sizable role in reaching the more bottlenecked audience who picked it up while it was still breaking beyond the initial Tiktok crowd (who were largely the ones to get it on the charts in the first place).
I mean it’s clear from the title of this thread that that was where ILX, at least, got onboard, and I too recall my local news (who by no means default to being plugged-in on The Hot News Trends In Music) first covering it when the controversy broke. As someone who admires LNX as much for his Extremely Online algorithm-mancer talents as his canny ear for a hook I don’t see any shame in the fact that he successfully leveraged that narrative to kick his career into third gear.

Anyway “C7osure” is a really sweet song and I look forward to the Lil Nas X hype train having at least enough momentum to get us to a full-length album, which will hopefully also be good

To be clear I don’t see any shame in it either ... I’m kind of fascinated by his canniness tbh, he’s also pretty much the only artist who seems comfortable / fluent in Online.

Still no matter how talented someone is there’s always elements of chance in success like this & I just think the billboard narrative made for something to root for whereas the tiktok narrative — had that been the one a label ran with to help “break” him with a crossover audience — be much more divisive and less effective

how many people on ILX can honestly tell me they've heard Sech's Otro Trago, the current #7 song on the Spotify charts? Are the kids dancing to that one in kindergartens too? Do you know? Are you posting anecdotally about it in your music critic facebook threads? What about DDG's "Hold Up," currently in the YouTube top ten? Do you think this will be the next song to dominate the Hot 100 for 13 weeks?

"otro traco": #74 spotify us (weekly, up 14) (#70 daily); #30 youtube us (weekly, up 1)
"hold up": n/a spotify us (weekly or daily); #60 youtube us (weekly, debut) currently trending sharply downward since music video premiere one week ago (song features popular youtuber queen naija)

so no it's evident neither of these songs are even close to being on that level, lol (altho i expect "otro traco" could end up bouncing around the lower tiers of the hot 100 if its gains continue; ddg song will spend one week on the hot 100 at most if even that).

i'm well aware that songs routinely perform well on one service or another for a brief period of time, meaning exactly nothing in the long run. everything i've said in defense of my position has been not only about how well "old town road" was ranking, but also the sheer amount of upward momentum it was exhibiting at essentially every point of its (at that point) weeks-long ascent, especially for an artist who was basically unknown before this song. the only song currently in a comparable situation (new artist's breakout, strong upward momentum as exhibited on *multiple* streaming platforms) is lil tecca's "ransom", which, whaddya know, is currently bounding up the hot 100 with strong gains every week and will probably go top 20 if not top 10 (similar to what polo g's song just recently did). i guess you'd say the jury's still out on whether that song's going to be a hit, that it's too soon to say that it's broken out? (oh but adults don't know it yet! goalposts.) "old town road" was doing even better, by some distance, than that at the time the billboard snafu story was posted; it was obviously headed straight for the top 10 at least -- again, with at-the-time virtually no airplay, no billboard ballyhoo, and no exposure beyond its performance on the streaming services that was catalyzed by the tiktok thing.

like, by this point it's fairly clear that no amount of data points is going to budge you from your position, which is fine. but there's no really no need to try to suggest that the facts i acknowledge in support my (correct) position are misread or not placed in their proper context, especially when your own rebuttal pulls numbers from, as pointed out above, the wrong damn chart. at least you are now being direct about your frustration re: ppl being dumb/wrong online about something popular -- like, i too groaned at that one twitter opportunist's brazenly inaccurate but very viral thread about the country charts.

thank u for coming to my tiktok ted talk! it is actually really dumb that i have even bothered spilling this much e-ink over this shite but i did want to raise my hand as an objector after whiney said no one was arguing that the song didn't break (shortly) after the billboard thing. because it didn't.

the fuck is tiktok

fun / interesting discussion, btw.

i'm pretty sure i like "Panini" more than "Old Town Road" but it's really hard to measure that because the latter is like wallpaper in my house at this point

xp tiktok is the musical.ly app, if you've ever seen that, rebranded/relaunched. its current niche is somewhere between the former musical.ly and vine apps -- short/amusing clips of teens dancing/lp syncing to songs, often looped

I’m not clear on how pointing out that it was more successful than the songs i pulled arbitrarily from those charts is relevant if we’re talking about the narrative that took hold as the song broke. My point of contention was that if that narrative had been about the tik tok memes instead of a narrative about billboard, it would be a much more divisive hit, of which there are many (no one is having these impassioned discussions about the massive success of polo g); certainly you could argue it’s much less likely the remix (which unquestionably enhanced its rise) would have been turned around as quickly; it was a major PR slam dunk. And I still maintain that if the broader perception had been that this hit was a result of annoying tiktok memes rather than country music crossover history, the mainstream awareness of this unquestionable hit song would have been interpreted entirely differently. No this does not mean that I’m saying it wouldn’t have been a hit, or even that it would have gone number one. I specially said it would have been received much differently! The massive Sueco song is a good example of this, if you’re looking for a better example of tiktok driven fame.

If you’re asking if I think the song would have been as big without the billboard meme I would say definitely not; but I never argued it wasn’t really a hit or it wasn’t doing well off tik tok streams, I’m talking about how it is received by today show hosts and elementary music school classes, which aren’t performing polo g’s “pop out”

Like this is a song fucking ken burns is weighing in on in pitchfork interviews, he has literally never been asked about a rap song before unless there’s something from the end of the jazz doc I’ve forgotten. That level of crossover success didn’t come solely bc there was a viral novelty song on tik tok, it came bc the big narrative about it involved country industry gatekeepers trying to draw lines around genre in a way that suggest racism

honestly...Ken Burns being asked about Old Town Road, that's some shit right there

okay that all makes sense to me and i would agree there. looking back upthread i definitely misinterpreted what you meant when you wrote "the popular response to this song would have been different imo" -- i thought you were actually arguing that the song was not on the course to being a big hit, lol, especially when subsequent responses continued to reference the charts and numbers and such. thank you for clarifying and sorry if i was a dick.

Tried to find Griel’s take (haven’t seen one) but Xgau weighs in on his website’s blog:

Q: Do you like "Old Town Road"? -- Alexander Robertson, Wilton, Connecticut

A: I like "Old Town Road" in the Billy Ray Cyrus remix. But I don't love it. As a song I think it tops Childish Gambino's "This Is America" but not Cardi B's "Bodak Yellow," two previous must-hear this-is-a-phenomenon singles I got on late because I'm so album-oriented in this phase of my life, but found none of the three as culturally or aesthetically compelling as I was supposed to. This may be because I'm 77 and may be because most current "memes," if that's what these are, are less intrinsically compelling than must-hears should be. More than, let us say, "Beat It" or "Hound Dog" (but maybe not the overrated "Heartbreak Hotel"), they are pure functions of an information system less universal than such information systems are credited with being. This is why so many "memes" would once just have been called "hypes." On the other hand, taking "Old Town Road" off the country chart strikes me as racist pure and simple, because country radio remains racist regardless of the Darius Ruckers and Kane Browns it makes room for. And of course, it's also sexist in an era when so many of the edgiest country singers are women: Miranda Lambert, Angaleena Presley, Becky Warren, Margo Price, Ashley Monroe, Mary Gauthier, even Kacey Musgraves, can I mention Lori McKenna, and I know I'm forgetting people.

Not gonna dunk on that take overall but find it amusing that he takes a different Elvis song down a peg seemingly out of (rightful) nervousness about the optics of his saying “but it’s no [Elvis song]” in the first place

There’s been a lot of preposterous shit written in this thread but nothing quite so ridiculous as a contention that the old town road yee haw juice memes were not insanely lame and uncool

the uncoolness was part of the point iirc. 'cool' is not cool anymore, granddad!

I love watching people wrestle with whether they should like this semi-novelty song and what it means about them

the struggle is real

When your favorite song comes on...wait for it!🤠 @LilNasX pic.twitter.com/Zdxd8QgdSt

— Aussies Doing Things (@aussiesdointhgs) June 28, 2019

No matter how you feel about the song, dog ... otm?

This was our clap-out song on the last day of school. If you hate it, hearing it in the context of 250 kids aged 5-14 singing along...might make you hate it even more. Or not.

apparently there is a version of "old town road" with lil nas x edited out

Is it called “34 Ghosts IV”