How ‘Old Town Road’ Transforms the Listener
The last time country music produced the most popular song in America was 2005, when American Idol catapulted Carrie Underwood’s “Inside Your Heaven” to the peak of the Hot 100. Nashville’s drought at pop’s top will continue this week, technically, even though Ariana Grande’s reigning No. 1 was overtaken by a banjo-laden song about horses, cowboys, and porches.
That song, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” has profited from the very question of whether it is, in fact, country. In mid-March, the track by thethen-19-year-old Atlantan appeared at No. 19 on the Billboard country charts, prompting certain Nashville pundits to protest; this was rap, not country, they argued. Billboard was convinced and the country charts. Publicity over that episode, the continued simmering of a social-media related to the song, and last week’s release of
