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- [00:00]
Chris Melanfi
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One Series. On our last episode, an audio companion to my new book Old Town Road, I offered some history on Lil Nas X's record setting hit not only in 2019 when the song Old Town Road set an all time Hot 100 record, but also the decades prior to Old Town Road when everyone from Ray Charles and the Rappin Duke to Bubba Sparks and Jason Aldean R were mixing country music with R and B and rap. We're now into the 21st century when a new generation of viral hitmakers are about to reboot. How the charts function in January 2006, 13 years before Old Town Road, the top of the Hot 100 was briefly overtaken by a quartet from the Bankhead Projects, the same Atlanta housing development where then 6 year old Montero Hill was living. They did it with a quirky track that's arguably the simplest Hot 100 number one song ever. They topped the chart for one week and would never hit the top 40 again. I Talked briefly about D4L's Laffy Taffy three years ago in our post Christmas hits episode of Hit Parade. The song by D4L exploded in popularity during the holiday season of 2005. It blew up so fast, in fact, that just after Christmas, the first week of January 2006, Laffy Taffy ejected a song by the mighty Mariah Carey from the number one spot, her smash Don't Forget About Us. How exactly did D4L's skeletal hit dethrone the goddess of pop and bee? In a word, technology.
- [03:03]
Guest or Musical Performer
And I got more troll, I ball, I roll, it's soft, I know it's the summertime but your laughing Taffy got me for getting loose.
- [03:12]
Chris Melanfi
The 2005 holiday season was the first in which Apple's iTunes music store counted for Billboard's charts. That same year, Apple's iPod was at a peak of gifting popularity. A lot of teenagers woke up on Christmas morning 2005 with a new gadget to fill with songs and iTunes gift cards in their stockings. They needed software for their new hardware, and 99 cent download buyers made Laffy Taffy a smash. The January 2006 chart where D4L went to number one was based on data collected by Billboard the week just after Christmas 2005. For that one week, Laffy Taffy sold 175,000 downloads, which was a record at the time. If not for those thousands of downloads, Laffy never would have topped the Hot 100. It was not among radio's most played songs that week. Okay, but you may be asking why Laffy Taffy? What made teenagers all gravitate toward that song? Here again, technology plays a role. Laffy Taffy was a prototypical example of the hip hop sub genre known as Snap music. An Atlanta based offshoot of crunk music. Snap was rap reduced to its digital essence. An 808 thump, a bit of hi hat, some snapping of course, and chanting vocals. The simpler, the better hits in the mini genre called Snap music included Play by Mississippi rapper David Banner, Lean with It, Rock with it by Atlanta Troupe Dem Franchise Boys and Snap Yo Fingers by Crunk Godfather Lil John.
- [05:28]
Guest or Musical Performer
But let's go Snappy Finals. Do you still you can do it all by yourself. Let me see you do it.
- [05:37]
Chris Melanfi
Snap music was also colloquially called ringtone rap because it was crisp and simple enough to be reproduced by primitive chirpy mobile phones. In 2005, Apple's iPhone did not yet exist. Ringtones were the way that candy bar and flip phones could be customized to identify callers and rap hooks were ideal, such as for example, this simplified version of a 50 cent hit candy Shop. Ringtones were big money makers for the recording industry during their short lived peak. Billboard even tracked ringtones on their own hot ringtones chart for a few years starting in 2004. While ringtone purchases never counted for the Hot 100, the viral technology had a knock on effect. The presence of Laffy Taffy on scores of Motorola and Nokia phones made the song ubiquitous, compelling thousands to buy the full D4L song, which did count for the big chart during the song's Hot 100 run. About 3 million Americans bought the full length Laffy Taffy. So you can think of Laffy Taffy as the first Hot 100 number one hit powered by mobile virality. Consuming it in short bursts compelled millions to want to hear the whole song. In other words, what ringtones were to the mid aughts TikTok would be to the end of the 2010s blazing a trail toward Old Town Road. This concept of musical virality will be our primary focus for the rest of this episode. You might say the interplay of music and technology comes in two varieties, the medium and the marketing. In terms of medium, technology has long shaped the songs themselves. The common length of a popular song, averaging around three minutes, was driven first by the late 19th century technology of phonograph cylinders, which ran for two to four minutes in length. Then by the 1920s, the development of the 10 inch 78 RPM shellac record, which topped out at three minutes aside, that average length stayed intact through the launch of the 1940s technology, the 45 RPM vinyl single. This was the medium for three minute 1950s hits by the likes of Elvis Presley. One side of a 45 was ideally no longer than five minutes, although a few hits like the Beatles 7 minute 1968 number one hey Jude were longer. As for marketing, there was such a thing as a viral hit before the Internet. It's just that infections caught on a little slower. Consider this early 60s meme. I mean dance craze.
- [09:55]
Guest or Musical Performer
Come on baby man, let's do the.
- [09:59]
Chris Melanfi
Twist Come on baby Chubby Checkers the Twist climbed to the top of the Hot 100 in September 1960. At that point, Twist fever was fueled by teenagers learning the dance from TV's American Bandstand. But then, more than a year later, photos began appearing in 1961 Newspapers of celebrities doing the Twist at places like New York City's Peppermint Lounge. That wave was fueled in part by second wave twist records like Joey D and the Starlighters hit Peppermint Twist. In other words, the dance was now belatedly deemed acceptable for adults, not just teenagers. That's when Chubby Checkers 1960 hit re entered the Hot 100 and by January of 62 climbed all the way back.
- [11:12]
Guest or Musical Performer
To number one and go like this.
- [11:23]
Chris Melanfi
Chubby Checkers the Twist became the first ever single to reach number one in two separate chart runs. As the dance spread like an infection from the young to the old. From the fall of 1960 through the winter of 62. That was about as fast as a viral musical phenomenon could propagate pre Internet Flashing ahead three decades the first ever major label distribution of a song over the Internet came in 1994. Geffen records issued an Aerosmith B side called Head first for free on the then dominant Internet service provider CompuServe on dial up modem speeds in 94. It took about 90 minutes to download this four and a half minute track. However, the first song sold online came three years later. Duran Duran's minor 1997 hit Electric Barbarella, a number 52 Hot 100 hit, was issued by Capitol Records as a 99 cent digital single. Both of these digital releases were essentially beta tests. Aerosmith's track was distributed as a wav file in fairly low fidelity. The Duran Duran single was sold in a long defunct format called Liquid Audio. It wasn't until the MP3 began to take hold on college campuses that Internet song sharing and mass scale electronic musical piracy took off. This eventually led to the 2003 launch of Apple's aforementioned iTunes Music store, which was when music downloads came of age as e Commerce. By 2005, downloads were woven into Billboard's major chart formulas. As vital as all these advances were in hindsight, the more profound musical invention of the aughts wasn't file sharing or even the dollar download, it was social media and video sharing. In other words, the meta narrative became more vital than the medium. The invention of YouTube, for example, was first inspired by creators who wanted to find a more convenient way to share video of the Justin Timberlake Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction from the 2004 Super bowl halftime show. Within months of YouTube's 2005 launch, music videos were the most viral content on the site, kicking off with the Saturday Night Live parody rap video by the Lonely Island Lazy Sunday. By 2006, YouTube was already fueling music consumption much as MTV had in the 1980s. As we discussed in our novelty hits episode of Hit Parade, Weird Al Yankovic, the veteran purveyor of comical music and song parodies, scored the first top 10 hit of his long career in October 2006, the week he turned 47, when white and Nerdy, his parody of rapper Chamillionaires Ride and dirty and a YouTube sensation, sold 71,000 downloads in a week and vaulted on the Hot 100 from number 28 to number 9. Too.
- [15:54]
Guest or Musical Performer
White and Nerdy, can't you see him White and Nerdy?
- [15:59]
Chris Melanfi
As with Laffy Taffy and the ringtone video activity, which did not yet count for the Hot 100, had a knock on effect on Weird Al's digital sales. Then, a year after White and Nerdy, a 17 year old rapper born DeAndre Way, who dubbed himself Soulja Boy Tellem, scored the first number one hit slash YouTube dance craze when his video blew up. Crank that Parentheses Soldier Boy was a sensation. In 2007, Soulja Boy was both DeAndre Way's rap name and the name of his dance a bounce back plus Superman pose maneuver crank that spent seven weeks atop the Hot 100, fueled by weekly download sales roughly twice the size of D4L's two years earlier.
- [17:18]
Guest or Musical Performer
Get the fight, then I'll come.
- [17:22]
Chris Melanfi
The lonely islands Weird Al's and Soulja Boy's YouTube successes offered a blueprint for the combination of comedy and music that Lil Nas X would mine in his quest for virality a dozen years later. We'll be back momentarily. Me. Hey listeners, the holiday season is upon us and the Slate Shop is the perfect place to take the guesswork out of your gift list. Browse our selection of hand poured candles, classy cocktail kits, stunning stationery, expertly crafted pasta makers and everything in between. We even have official merch for the Slate fans in your Life anytime before 11:27. That's anytime before Cyber Monday. We're offering 30% off all items in the store. Get your gift sets, stocking stuffers, white elephant gifts and a treat for yourself while you're at it by going to slate.comshop. that's slate.comshop happy shopping. These early YouTube sensations were also heavily shared on social media, which was then in its nascent phase. Back in the mid aughts social media was dominated by MySpace, a platform heavily invested in music. The site offered a user friendly way to upload songs or albums. Many hosted on artists own MySpace pages. Uk post Brit pop band arc Arctic Monkeys was arguably the first act with a MySpace fueled chart topper. The site hyped up their debut single, I Bet yout Look Good on the Dance floor, which in 2005 entered the British chart at number one. For their part, the band professed ignorance of the site and said the MySpace activity was largely fomented by their fans. In 2009, the MySpace feat was replicated in America when a Christian electropop artist named Adam Young, who called himself Owl city, reached number one on the Hot 100 with his own debut single, firefly.
- [20:27]
Guest or Musical Performer
You would not believe your eyes if.
- [20:30]
Chris Melanfi
10 million fireflies lit up the world.
- [20:34]
Guest or Musical Performer
As I fell asleep.
- [20:38]
Chris Melanfi
Unlike Arctic Monkeys, the introverted Adam Young actively curated his MySpace profile, developing a fan base for Owl City that led to his signing with major label Universal Republic. Young's manager told a music industry blog that the label saw Owl City as, quote, representing the future of our business. He added, people feel like they know Owl City, like they've got a direct connection to him because of how he approaches his connection with them online. Unquote. In the tens as MySpace gave way to Facebook and Twitter, the social era of the charts began in earnest. At the peak of Lady Gaga's chart success in 2011, Rolling Stone revealed that she was not only Twitter's most followed music star, but the site's most followed person period, with a commanding 11 million followers. Her Facebook stats were similarly massive with 39 million likes at the time, edging out Rihanna and Shakira. Around the same time, Taylor Swift was making expert use of the social apps to stoke fan engagement, projecting intimacy through social posts that mirrored the conversational tone of her hits.
- [22:29]
Guest or Musical Performer
Cause like, we hadn't seen each other.
- [22:31]
Chris Melanfi
In a month when you said you.
- [22:34]
Guest or Musical Performer
Needed space, what then you come around again?
- [22:37]
Chris Melanfi
And Swift even used social posts to engage with other artists. A 2014 Instagram video selfie of Swift lip syncing rapper Kendrick Lamar's Backseat Freestyle was heavily shared. And played a role in Swift's eventual connection with mutual admirer Lamar, who then provided a featured rap on the remix of Taylor's 2015 number one hit Bad Blood.
- [23:17]
Guest or Musical Performer
Hey remember when you tried to write me off Remember when you thought I'd take a loss don't you remember you thought that I would need you YouTube.
- [23:26]
Chris Melanfi
Also came of age as a music influencer at the turn of the tens. A Canadian adolescent named Justin Bieber was discovered via YouTube, signing a major label contract at age 14. In 2010, the 15 year old Bieber's video for Baby became the first YouTube video of any kind to break half a billion views. Though the song received only modest airplay on top 40 radio stations, Baby sold 4 million copies to video besotted fans and reached number five on the Hot 100. Bieber paid it forward a couple of years later, giving a boost to fellow Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen by talking up her irresistible confection Call Me maybe on Twitter. When Jepsen dropped the Maybe video on YouTube, the song blew up in America, debuting on the Hot 100 in March 2012 and hitting number one by June. We talked about Call Me maybe in our Hit Parade episode about the impact of music videos on the pop charts. The maybe video helped make Jepsen's hit not only 2012's Song of the Summer, but also one of the most socially shared songs of the year, as it inspired others to post videos performing the song and making its universal hand gesture for that romantic phone call. Before the mainstreaming of Instagram and the invention of vine and TikTok, Call Me maybe was institutionalizing the hit song as Hit Me.
- [25:48]
Guest or Musical Performer
Hey, I just met here.
- [25:53]
Chris Melanfi
YouTube's hit making prowess was best displayed on Gangnam Style by Psy, America's first major K pop hit, The Gangnam Style video featured Psy doing his very own comical horsey riding dance, yet another precursor to Old Town Road. It was the first YouTube video to surpass 1 billion views globally. That spurred sales of more than 5 million downloads in America, which in turn spurred terrestrial radio airplay. At its peak, Gangnam ranked 12th on Billboard's weekly Radio Songs chart, remarkable given the song's 98% Korean lyrics, and it was America's top selling download for more than a month. Had YouTube views counted for the Hot 100, then Psy would have had K Pop's first ever US chart topper, eight years ahead of blockbuster Korean boy band BTS. Instead, given its impressive but still limited radio spins, Gangnam peaked at number two on the Hot 100 for seven weeks in the fall of 2012. Carly Rae Jepsen's and Psy's 2012 hits just missed Billboard's additional of YouTube data to the charts, which happened early the next year. Starting with the Hot 100, dated March 2, 2013, billboard factored in not only plays of label sanctioned music videos, but also fan videos incorporating at least half a minute of an original recording. This led to yet another important precedent for Old Town Road, the first Internet meme to directly create a number one hit. We've also talked about Bauer's Harlem Shake in several prior Hit Parade episodes. What made Harlem Shake an instant smash wasn't an official video by Bauer. He didn't even have a fully produced video, just a bare bones clip of the single's artwork. Shake instead benefited largely from Billboard's new fan video rule. The week the track hit number one, it was heard in YouTube videos 103 million times. This one week streaming record would later be broken by Lil Nas x. Later in 2013, a more established act, Disney Channel refugee turned pop provocateur Miley Cyrus, benefited just as profoundly from the YouTube rule as Bauer had, and her chart topper Wrecking Ball, also showed the potential of nascent social video apps.
- [29:21]
Guest or Musical Performer
We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain, we jumped Never asking why we kissed.
- [29:30]
Chris Melanfi
As we discussed in a prior episode, Cyrus's hit Wrecking Ball was fueled not only by her own scantily clad music video, but also a fan's video lampoon. This fan posted a super cut of himself wearing just his underwear and a bushy beard, lip syncing Wrecking Ball on a ball a la Cyrus to unsuspecting users of Chat Roulette, a then novel video chat service. This YouTube compilation captured Chatrouletta's delighted but flabbergasted reactions on one side of the screen while the fan rode his ball and sang on the other side.
- [30:16]
Guest or Musical Performer
I came in like a wrecking.
- [30:22]
Chris Melanfi
Love All I wanted was because the fan clip used the original audio of Cyrus's hit, its views counted for the Hot 100. That was enough to push Wrecking ball back to number one. Chat Roulette's first wave of popularity was fairly short lived, although the service later made a comeback during the COVID 19 pandemic. Between the launches of Chatroulette and TikTok came Vine, a short form video service on which users shared six second long looping clips. In its scant four years of existence, 2013 to 2017, vine spun off a colossal number of micro memes from the phrase on fleek, a catchphrase coined by user peaches Monroe, to six year old Terrence Jackson simply saying the name LeBron James several times in a specific cadence.
- [31:27]
Guest or Musical Performer
LeBron James, LeBron James, LeBron James.
- [31:32]
Chris Melanfi
Early in the life of vine, the service created a hit song fueled by a viral dance invented by a Jamaican American rapper, Akil Pollard, who called himself Bobby Shmurda. His hit Hot Boy began its life as a full length homemade video of the 19 year old Shmurda drinking, smoking and performing his single on a street in Brooklyn surrounded by friends. The key moment in that video, when Shmurda pops off his Knicks cap, turns his back to the camera and does a side to side hip sweep swivel with back and arm twists, was isolated by a vine user in 2014 and dubbed the Schmoney Dance. That vine clip was watched more than 3 million times in two months, during which Shmurda signed with Epic Records. In August 2014, the song broke on the Hot 100 and by the fall it peaked at number seven.
- [32:40]
Guest or Musical Performer
Like the fifth grade really never made no difference with the.
- [32:47]
Chris Melanfi
Viral dances turned out to be Vine's killer app. Hundreds of vine users uploaded their own six second takes on the Shmoney Dance. The following year Ricky Hawk, a 17 year old Atlanta rapper who went by the name Cilento, dropped the track Watch Me Parentheses Whip Slash Nene with its own signature dance. He dropped it on SoundCloud, YouTube, Instagram and Vine. Only Cilento's YouTube views counted for the Hot 100, but that was enough to propel Watch me to number three by July 2015. We'll be right back. As all of this social activity was blowing up in the mid 10? S, the cross pollination of hip hop and country music was developing. Soon enough it too would be swept up in the social music wave. A decade after he teamed up with country star Tim McGraw, rapper Nelly teamed with Nashville duo Florida Georgia Line in 2013 for a remix of their country smash Cruise. FGL announced the hip hop remix via their social media channels and it blew up on the Hot 100, reaching the top five on the pop chart months after topping the country chart.
- [34:47]
Guest or Musical Performer
Song and you Make Me Wanna hold my.
- [34:55]
Chris Melanfi
Meanwhile, irrepressible striver Colt Ford kept trying to evolve from hick hop novelty to legitimate hit maker. He dropped bars alongside everyone from country mainstays Jake Owen and Jason Aldean to his white country rap forebear bubba sparks. A 2013 posse cut by Bubba and Colt called country folks laid bare the commonality they saw in rap and country audiences.
- [35:29]
Guest or Musical Performer
So lookie here cold beer on a tailgate Been doing this for some years y' all so late banging out Cass and a little George straight hot damn cold Floyd back with Bubba K.
- [35:44]
Chris Melanfi
But even when white artists like Colt Ford and Bubba Sparks were doing the rapping, country radio programmers were spinning hick hop only selectively playing their usual role as gatekeepers of the genre. Such intersectional concerns lurked below the surface for Most of the 2010s, until Black artists began forcing the issue by invoking country tropes toward the end of the decade, even more overtly than Outcast or Nappy Roots did at the turn of the millennium. This was the last piece of the puzzle for Lil Nas X and Old Town Road Country.
- [36:30]
Guest or Musical Performer
Billy made a cup of Milly trying to party roll rice inside the Piccadilly oh he had a cup right side street A of course got another half a million white tees of course.
- [36:43]
Chris Melanfi
Leading the charge in the mid 10s was Atlanta's Jeffrey Lamar Williams, aka Young Thug, whom Lil Nas X would later credit as the forefather of the country trap sound. An eccentric rapper with a unique vocal tone, Thug widened the lane for the cross pollination of country tropes into rap jams on his acclaimed 27 mixtape Beautiful Thugger Girls. Young Thug's leadoff track, Family Don't Matter opens with an exuberant Yee Haw and only gets twangier from there.
- [37:27]
Guest or Musical Performer
I got some jobs all day.
- [37:36]
Chris Melanfi
Other country trap tracks that were contemporaneous with or inspired by Young Thug came from Soundcloud rapper Mir Fontaine with his Tripoli twangy Down by the River.
- [37:50]
Guest or Musical Performer
I remember it was down by the river in the hanky panky My bro got shot by the bank the panky and her damn near cry by my Homies outside.
- [37:59]
Chris Melanfi
Mystic Funk with the rustic Haunt you, a trap rock jam with keening guitars and a canyon deep vocal from rapper singer Lil Peep. And Lil Tracy with his laconic back. Woodsy Like a Farmer. Like a Farmer was perhaps the most obvious antecedent to Old Town Road, not only in its twang but also in its sense of humor and even its lyrical hook. Quote I got horses in my car just like a flower farmer I got some horses in this truck. Keep up Unquote. In a video interview with the lyrics website, genius Lil Tracy said that he and his friends were messing around with, quote, country people impersonations when he stumbled across a folksy beat on a beat maker's website. Tracy was inspired by that beat to freestyle a deep south accent very similar to what Montero Hill did in his moment of inspiration that led to Old Town Road.
- [39:25]
Guest or Musical Performer
I heard that whore say you handsome put that heat to your face I'm a brand.
- [39:37]
Chris Melanfi
Released in the spring of 2018, Lil Tracy's Like a Farmer racked up some 2 million SoundCloud streams in six months. A remix with Philadelphia rapper Lil Uzi Vert did even better, garnering another 7.6 million streams by the fall of 2018. That was around the time the very idea of the Black Cowboy was becoming a viral meme.
- [40:06]
Guest or Musical Performer
54321 level up level up Level up Level up Level up level up.
- [40:14]
Chris Melanfi
In September 2018, one year after rapper Young Thug's beautiful Thugger Girls mixtape caught some attention for his Yee Haw, R B hitmaker Ciara was promoting some new music and she tweeted a photo shoot of herself in Western Western wear for the fall cover of the fashion magazine King Kong. That same day, a Texan Twitter user named Brymlandro tweeted a pair of the Ciara photos with an appended caption quote the Yeehaw Agenda is in full effect, unquote. In the wake of Milandro's tweet, the hashtag Yeehaw Agenda took on a life of its own. It seemed to elevate a conversation around the history of the Black Cowboy that had been percolating through various media over the prior two years, including the cultural debate surrounding the 2016 CMA Awards Performance by Beyonce, who was joined by country trio the Chicks to perform her Texas celebrating Country and Western indebted Daddy Lessons. A month after Ciara's and Milandro's tweets, Rockstar Games released its blockbuster Red Dead Redemption 2 video game, the latest immersive installment in its long running franchise of Western themed games. In addition to opening to blockbuster game sales, Red Dead 2 received positive press attention for its portrayals of black characters in the Old west and its critiques of white supremacy. Gamers could even exact justice against Ku Klux klansmen. Now that TikTok had launched in 2018, Red Dead memes quickly sprouted up on the video site, mostly involving game addled players imitating the grizzled accent of the game's protagonist, Arthur Morgan.
- [42:44]
Guest or Musical Performer
You had a choice. You speak as if killing were something I cared about. You ever wonder about eternity?
- [42:49]
Chris Melanfi
You should.
- [42:50]
Guest or Musical Performer
I hope it's hot and terrible, Mrs. Downs. Otherwise I'll feel I've been sold a false bill of goods. Now please give me that money.
- [42:59]
Chris Melanfi
Within weeks of its release, Old Town Road was swept up in all of these memes and trends, the mania for Red Dead, the Yeehaw Agenda, and TikTok. In its early days, TikTok was largely driven by joke memes and was only beginning to show potential as a platform for musical discovery. For example, a 2018 track by rap duo I Love Friday called Mia Khalifa took off as a TikTok meme because of some snarky lyrics, but the song never appeared on a Billboard chart. Old Town Road changed all that as the first hit song plus meme incubated on TikTok. When Lil Nas X released the song in December 2018, his official music video, at least at that time, was composed entirely of Red Dead Redemption 2 game footage. Soon enough, TikTok users realized the song worked especially well for short cowboy themed videos. Video makers keyed into the juncture in the song right after its opening chorus, when the trap beat drops and Nas first sings I got the horses in the back.
- [44:36]
Guest or Musical Performer
I got the horses in the back.
- [44:44]
Chris Melanfi
Michael Pelchat, a 21 year old tick Tock influencer, was, he later claimed, Lil Nas X's Patient Zero, the first to post Old Town Road on Tick tock over a 15 second clip of himself doing a hoedown style kick dance in boots in his Lowell, Massachusetts bedroom. In a later interview, he explained the meme's origin. What made you choose that song? No one knew.
- [45:15]
Michael Pelchat (TikTok Influencer)
Like I heard like five seconds of it and I was like this is gonna be something. There's something here.
- [45:21]
Chris Melanfi
Really.
- [45:22]
Michael Pelchat (TikTok Influencer)
I was on Twitter and there was 4 1/2 5 second video of just like some dude dancing and it was just the horses in the back. So I just looked up the lyrics and that's how I found it on SoundCloud. But right when I heard it I I knew it was going to be something.
- [45:39]
Chris Melanfi
The rest, as they say, is history. As 2019 began, Lil Nas X's Old Town Road was fully established across social media as the Yeehaw Agenda's official soundtrack. What was mutually reinforcing about the Agenda and the Yeehaw Challenge was the broadening of the Black cowboy cultural conversation into both a meme and a kind of social movement. In the months to come, as Old Town Road scaled the charts, tangled with Nashville and set all time Hot 100 records. As I described near the top of this episode, Lil Nas X would find new ways to keep his song both cross cultural and viral. He appeared in his cowboy outfit at sporting events, awards shows, the Stagecoach Festival, even an elementary school. The release of the song's major label music video, which Columbia Records called the official movie, racked up tens of millions of views and featured cameos from rapper Vince Staples, remixer Diplo, of course co star Billy Ray Cyrus, and even Chris Rock.
- [46:57]
Guest or Musical Performer
When you see a black man on a horse going that fast, you just gotta let him fly.
- [47:03]
Chris Melanfi
Nas kept the virality going with additional remixes of Old Town Road that emphasized the song's multi genre appeal. On one remix, rapper Young Thug, instigator of the country Trap sound, reprised his yeehaw from his own family Don't Matter. And on that same remix, country music's online sensation Mason Ramsey, the yodeling kid added his own kiddie friendly verses. Yet another remix, subtitled Seoul Town Road featured South Korean rapper rm, AKA Rap monster of K pop sensations bts. Lil Nas X's hit was conquering all corners of the globe.
- [48:13]
Guest or Musical Performer
With the riding to the.
- [48:22]
Chris Melanfi
Between the remixes, the multi genre audience, the viral videos and social media dominance, Montero's coming out and, well, just the infectious quality of the song. Yes, that mattered too. Old Town Road did what no hit had ever done before. At the 2020 Grammys, Old Town Road took home two prizes and Lil Nas X performed his improbable mega smash with the help of a full band, a string section and almost everybody who had helped him make it a smash. BTS Diploma, Mason Ramsey and Billy Ray Cyrus. It was a triumph and more than a bit ironic. This song that Montero Hill had built by himself out of a beat he found on the Internet just 15 months earlier was now being supersized live on stage with the help of an army of musicians. But in a way this expansion was appropriate, as the audience in the Staples center and millions watching at home sang along to the top song of the year. The fact was, Old Town Road now belongs to belonged to everybody and Lil Nas X can't nobody tell him nothing. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfilter. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Derek John is executive producer of Narrative Podcasts and we had help from Joel Meyer A quick note about my book Old Town Road if you're listening to this before mid November, I'm holding reading discussions of the book on Tuesday, November 14th at Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan, on Thursday, November 16th at Taylor Company Books in Brooklyn and on Friday, November 17th at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut. Check these places websites for details. I'd love to see you there. Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com you can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Mulanfi Spend a lot.
- [51:44]
Guest or Musical Performer
Of money on my brand new guitar Baby's gotta have a diamond ring to fit the sports bro riding down model where my Maserati sports car got no stress I do all that.