Old Town Road
"Old Town Road" is a song by American rapper Lil Nas X, first released independently in December 2018. After gaining popularity, the single was re-released by Columbia Records in March 2019. Lil Nas X also recorded a remix with American country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, which was released on April 5, 2019. Both the original and remix were included on Lil Nas X's debut EP, 7.
The song has been widely labeled as "country rap", a genre that had not often reached the mainstream prior to its release. Dutch record producer YoungKio produced the instrumental and made it available for purchase online in 2018. It features a sample of a banjo from "34 Ghosts IV" by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. The sample was placed behind trap-style Roland TR-808 drums and bass. Lil Nas X purchased the instrumental for US$30 and recorded "Old Town Road" in one day. At the time, he had been living with his sister after dropping out of college; his real world struggles served as an influence on some of the lyrics.
The song initially gained popularity on social video sharing app TikTok and eventually entered the Billboard charts in March 2019. The song reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart before the magazine disqualified it from being included on the chart on grounds that it did not fit the genre, sparking a debate on the definition of country music. Though it was not re-entered onto the overall country charts, both the original version of the song and the remix featuring Cyrus eventually peaked at number one on the flagship Billboard chart, the Hot 100, for a record-breaking nineteen consecutive weeks. Internationally, one or more versions of "Old Town Road" have topped the national singles charts in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; and charted within the top 10 in various other markets.
The song was awarded diamond certification by the RIAA, in October 2019, for moving ten million total units in the United States, the fastest song to be awarded diamond certification. At the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, the remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus was nominated for Record of the Year and won Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Music Video.
Background and recording
, and its subgenre, country trap, emerged onto the mainstream following American rapper Young Thug's experimental mixtape Beautiful Thugger Girls. Lil Nas X has cited Young Thug as a pioneer of country trap. In May 2018, Lil Tracy and Lil Uzi Vert ignited the trend with their country rap single "Like a Farmer ".In 2018, Lil Nas X dropped out of college to pursue a music career, but was discouraged by his parents. He moved in with his sister, spending time promoting his music on the Internet while getting just three hours of sleep each night. Lil Nas X found the beat for "Old Town Road" in October 2018 and began writing after his sister told him he had to move out soon. Lil Nas X felt like he was "out of options" and said that his sister's and parents' frustrations with him inspired the song's chorus, "can't nobody tell me nothing." Within the month of writing it, Lil Nas X chose to spin the song's meaning so that the "old town road" would be a symbol of success. Lil Nas X recorded the song on December 2, 2018, at the CinCoYo Recording Studio in Atlanta, and released it the following day. Dutch record producer YoungKio produced the beat a year prior to the song's release and uploaded it to his online store for selling beats. He sampled Nine Inch Nails' track "34 Ghosts IV" and kept the song intact instead of chopping it as a challenge to himself, saying he "didn't really have any country thoughts about it." He had never heard of Nine Inch Nails prior to stumbling upon "34 Ghosts IV". Lil Nas X bought the beat from YoungKio for $30, but since purchases on his online store were anonymous, YoungKio didn't know the song was purchased by Lil Nas X until he saw it in an Instagram meme in December 2018. Trent Reznor later stated that, shortly after the song began gaining traction, he received a call from Lil Nas X's manager about the sample, asking for clearance to use it which Reznor granted. He described the song as "undeniably hooky".
On December 4, 2018, a day after the original version's release, Lil Nas X tweeted out that he wanted Cyrus on the song. Lil Nas X knew of Cyrus because of his role on Disney Channel television series Hannah Montana. Country singer Jake Owen was originally approached to co-write and record the first remix of "Old Town Road". Columbia Records executive Ron Perry reached out to Cyrus' wife Tish Cyrus saying that he would love if Cyrus were to hear "Old Town Road". Cyrus first heard the song over coffee on March 16, 2019 when Tish played it to him. Cyrus explained that he loved the original song the first time he heard it. Cyrus also mentioned that he related to the song the first time he heard it, connecting the "old town road" to the Old Town Bridge in Argillite, Kentucky that he used to play on as a kid. In response to Billboard removing "Old Town Road" from the Hot Country Songs chart, Billy Ray Cyrus tweeted his support for Lil Nas X and noted that the removal put him in the ranks of great outlaws.
Composition
"Old Town Road" has been variously described by publications as a country rap, trap, pop, country, rock Southern hip hop, or country trap song. Lil Nas X himself stated that he regards it as the latter. Produced by YoungKio, "Old Town Road" samples Nine Inch Nails' track "34 Ghosts IV" from their sixth studio album Ghosts I–IV. The song prominently features the playing of a banjo along with trap-style Roland TR-808 drums and bass throughout. It has been compared to Lil Tracy's 2018 single "Like a Farmer", which was later remixed by Lil Uzi Vert. The song is composed in the key of G minor with a chord progression of G7-Badd9-Fsus4-E6. It has an approximate tempo of 68 beats per minute.Release and promotion
"Old Town Road" was released independently as a single on December 3, 2018, during the rise of the "Yeehaw Agenda" meme, a movement appropriating cowboy fashion and culture. Danny Kang, manager of viral country artist Mason Ramsey, suggested to Rolling Stone that Lil Nas X listed the song under the country music genre on SoundCloud and iTunes as a way to manipulate chart algorithms, as it would be easier to top the country charts than the dominant hip hop/rap charts. Lil Nas X began creating memes to promote "Old Town Road" before it was picked up by TikTok users. The song's first music video is composed entirely of footage and clips from the 2018 Western action-adventure game Red Dead Redemption 2.The song gained traction in late December 2018 after becoming the "Yeehaw Challenge" meme on TikTok, where users created short videos set to the song. The challenge is credited with launching the song to debut at number 83 on the Billboard Hot 100, the chart on which the song has since peaked at number one. The song's popularity grew so quickly that radio stations had to download the audio from YouTube. On March 22, 2019, the success of the song allowed Lil Nas X to sign to Columbia Records, which now distributes the single.
The first official remix of "Old Town Road", featuring American country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, was released on April 5, 2019 by Columbia Records. The remix was recorded in support of "Old Town Road" being recognized as a country song. A limited edition 7-inch vinyl single was made available for purchase on May 1, 2019, featuring the remix on the A-side and the original on the B-side. The remix was eventually included alongside the original on Lil Nas X's debut EP, 7. The music video for the remix was released on May 17, 2019. It has guest appearances from Chris Rock, Haha Davis, Rico Nasty, Diplo, Jozzy, Young Kio, and Vince Staples.
On March 29, 2019, Lil Nas X danced to "Old Town Road" with the Atlanta Hawks cheerleaders during a basketball game at State Farm Arena. On April 29, 2019, Lil Nas X and Cyrus performed the live debut of "Old Town Road" as part of Diplo's set at the Stagecoach Festival. On June 24, 2019, Lil Nas X and Cyrus performed the song together on a saloon-themed stage for the 2019 BET Awards.
On January 26, 2020, Lil Nas X performed "Old Town Road" at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards with Diplo, BTS, Mason Ramsey, and Billy Ray Cyrus, before finishing his performance with "Rodeo" along with Nas.
Controversy
"Old Town Road" achieved a rare feat in Billboard history when it simultaneously charted on the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts in March 2019. However, Billboard quietly removed "Old Town Road" from its Hot Country chart for "not enough elements of today's country music". Had it not been disqualified, "Old Town Road" would have been the Hot Country Songs number-one song, as of the chart dated April 6, 2019. Lil Nas X stated he was "extremely disappointed" by the decision. In an interview, Time reporter Andrew R. Chow brought up Billboards decision to remove "Old Town Road" from the Country chart but keep it on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, asking Lil Nas X if he considers "Old Town Road" a country song. Lil Nas X replied, "The song is country trap. It's not one, it's not the other. It's both. It should be on both ."The exclusion of "Old Town Road" brought criticism of the evaluation of the work of non-white artists in the country genre, with Rolling Stone writer Elias Leight referring to Beyoncé, another black artist, whose song "Daddy Lessons" failed to be considered a country song by The Recording Academy in 2016. Leight also pointed out other difficulties faced by black artists making cross-genre music, noting that rapper Juice Wrld's Death Race for Love would "probably be the most commercially successful rock album of 2019", but would never appear on rock charts or playlists, another genre like country predominated by white artists. In music journalist Robert Christgau's opinion, "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." In light of the criticism, Billboard later stated that the decision to remove "Old Town Road" from the Hot Country Songs chart had nothing to do with Lil Nas X's race. When asked if he believed the decision by Billboard had any racial undertones, Lil Nas X replied, "I believe whenever you're trying something new, it's always going to get some kind of bad reception."
Despite being removed from the main Country Songs chart, "Old Town Road" managed to chart on Billboard
Commercial performance
In the United States, the original version of "Old Town Road" ascended to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the week ending April 13, 2019; at one minute and 53 seconds in length, it became the shortest number-one single since "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" by Herman's Hermits in 1965 and the fifth-shortest in the history of the chart. The following week, it and the newly-released remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus received a combined 143 million streams, surpassing Drake's "In My Feelings", which in last year had amassed 116.2 million in the same period, as the song with the highest single-week streaming figure in the country. "Old Town Road" continued to exceed 100 million streams in each of the eight following weeks, and as of June 2019 is responsible for the three highest weekly U.S. streaming totals in the history of digital music, as well as nine of the eleven highest overall. In October 2019, "Old Town Road" became the fastest single in RIAA history to receive Diamond certification in the United States. The certification, which is awarded to singles that attain national combined sales and streams of ten million units, was achieved by the song in its eleventh month of release. The single has sold 1.6 million digital copies in the United States as of February 2020."Old Town Road" topped the Hot 100 for nineteen consecutive weeks from April 13 to August 17, 2019. On August 24 it was finally unseated by Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy" which had waited in the runner-up spot for the previous nine weeks. "Old Town Road"'s overall run at number one is the longest in chart history, surpassing the previous record of sixteen weeks achieved by both "One Sweet Day", by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men, and "Despacito", by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber. In July 2019, "Old Town Road" also became the first number-one single on the Rolling Stone Top 100 chart when it held the position in the chart's inaugural edition. In accordance with their methodologies, Billboard and Rolling Stone each assign a single position to "Old Town Road" on their respective charts by combining the performance figures of every released version of the song determined to be sufficiently similar to the original. The former publication credits the entirety of the song's chart run solely to the remix featuring Cyrus.
In less than 12 months the single has achieved 12 times Platinum Award in US, which is the 2nd most Platinum Awards for a single certified only behind Despacito's 13.
Internationally, the original version of the song topped the national singles charts in at least ten other countries—Australia ; France and Norway ; Austria ; Switzerland ; Denmark, Germany, and Ireland ; Portugal ; and the United Kingdom —and charted within the top ten in more than five others. The remix featuring Cyrus achieved a record nineteen-week run at number one on the Canadian Hot 100, and peaked within the top five in more than five other markets. Both versions of the song were credited as number-one singles in the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
Track listing
Vinyl releaseCredits and personnel
Credits and personnel for "Old Town Road" and the four official remixes adapted from Tidal.- Lil Nas X – lead artist, songwriter
- YoungKio – producer, songwriter
- Trent Reznor – producer, songwriter
- Atticus Ross – producer, songwriter
- Cinco – recording engineer
- Billy Ray Cyrus – featured artist, songwriter
- Jocelyn "Jozzy" Donald – background vocals, songwriter
- Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki – vocal producer, mix engineer
- Joe Grasso – engineer
- Eric Lagg – mastering engineer
- Diplo – re-mixer
- Young Thug – featured artist, songwriter
- Mason Ramsey – featured artist
- Jake Owen – songwriter
- Ernest K. Smith – songwriter
- A Bainz – recording engineer
- Shaan Singh – recording engineer
- Alex Tumay – vocal producer
- Joey Moi – vocal producer
- RM – featured artist, songwriter
Awards and nominations
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Result | |
| 2019 | American Music Awards | Collaboration of the Year | ||
| 2019 | American Music Awards | Favorite Song — Rap/Hip-Hop | ||
| 2019 | American Music Awards | Favorite Music Video | ||
| 2019 | American Music Awards | Favorite Song — Pop/Rock | ||
| 2019 | Apple Music Awards | Song of the Year | ||
| 2019 | BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards | Best Single | ||
| 2019 | BET Hip Hop Awards | Single of the Year | ||
| 2019 | BET Hip Hop Awards | Best Collab, Duo or Group | ||
| 2019 | BreakTudo Awards | International Hit of the Year | ||
| 2019 | Country Music Association Awards | Musical Event of the Year | ||
| 2019 | Danish Music Awards | Foreign Song of the Year | ||
| 2019 | MTV Europe Music Awards | Best Song | ||
| 2019 | MTV Europe Music Awards | Best Video | ||
| 2019 | MTV Europe Music Awards | Best Collaboration | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Song of the Year | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Song of Summer | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Video of the Year | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Best Hip-Hop Video | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Best Collaboration | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Best Direction | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Best Wow Video | ||
| 2019 | MTV Video Music Awards | Best Art Direction | ||
| 2019 | NRJ Music Awards | International Song of the Year | ||
| 2019 | NRJ Music Awards | Video of the Year | ||
| 2019 | People's Choice Awards | Song of 2019 | ||
| 2019 | Teen Choice Awards | Choice Song: Male Artist | ||
| 2019 | Teen Choice Awards | Choice Collaboration | ||
| 2019 | Teen Choice Awards | Choice Song: R&B/Hip-Hop | ||
| 2019 | UK Music Video Awards | Best Urban Video – International | ||
| 2020 | Grammy Awards | Record of the Year | ||
| 2020 | Grammy Awards | Best Pop Duo/Group Performance | ||
| 2020 | Grammy Awards | Best Music Video |
Charts
"Old Town Road"
"Old Town Road (Remix)"
Weekly charts
Monthly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Certifications
Other remixes
The single's second official remix, "Old Town Road ", was released on April 29, 2019 featuring additional production by American DJ Diplo. Country music website The Boot described it as a "remix of remix" as it still retained vocals from Billy Ray Cyrus. Prior to the second remix, Diplo had recently released country music under the name Thomas Wesley. The remix was premiered at Diplo's set for the country music Stagecoach Festival alongside the first-ever live performance of "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X and Cyrus. Just before Lil Nas X and Cyrus' surprise on-stage appearance at Stagecoach 2019, Diplo claimed "Let me tell you, a country song." The Diplo remix peaked at number 24 on the RMNZ New Zealand Hot Singles chart. The remix is included on Diplo's second studio album Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil, released on May 29, 2020.A third official remix titled "Old Town Road " was released on July 12, 2019. The remix retains Billy Ray Cyrus' guest appearance and adds American rapper Young Thug and American singer Mason Ramsey. The remix was released in an effort to keep "Old Town Road" at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, as the song was two weeks away from tying for the all-time Hot 100 record held by "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men and "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee; it has since broken that record. Young Thug has been credited with bringing country trap into the mainstream with his experimental mixtape Beautiful Thugger Girls. Lil Nas X credited him with being a pioneer of bridging the gap between country and trap. In an interview with Billboard in March 2019, producer YoungKio was asked who he would want for a remix of "Old Town Road". He responded that he would want the rapper, describing "I've listened to every single song of his, and I think he's qualified to do this remix. I've listened to Beautiful Thugger Girls, and he has some country vibes on there." On April 9, 2019, Lil Nas X and Young Thug previewed a new "Old Town Road" remix on each of their Instagram accounts. On July 2, 2019, Lil Nas X mocked the remix again, tweeting out "?X?". Lil Nas X released the cover art for the final remix of "Old Town Road" on July 11, 2019 and indicated that the remix would be released within a few hours.
The single's fourth official remix, "Old Town Road ", was released on July 24, 2019 featuring South Korean rapper RM of boy band BTS. Lil Nas X has stated that "Seoul Town Road" would be the final remix. It is the only official remix to not feature Cyrus. The RM remix reached number eight on the RMNZ New Zealand Hot Singles chart.
American country singer Jake Owen and American rapper Lil Wayne both recorded verses for planned remixes that were unofficially released. Owen's remix was shared on The Bobby Bones Show in May 2019 and his verse was later replaced by Ramsey. Lil Wayne's remix was leaked on July 25, 2019 and he performed it live at Lollapalooza the next month. American rapper Cupcakke released her leaked remix of "Old Town Road", titled "Old Town Hoe", on April 17, 2019. The remix reinterprets the lyric "I'm gonna ride 'til I can't no more" in a sexually explicit way. A music video was later released in May 2019, and features Cupcakke and her backup dancers riding toy horses and handling phallic objects, including lollipops, water bottles, and corn on the cob. Lil Nas X responded favorably to the remix.
The actor-comedian Omi Vaidya parodied the song with "Oak Tree Road," a song about Asian Indian culture in the US.