The hick-hop hit “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X has officially fallen from its 19-week reign on the Billboard’s Hot 100 No. 1’s chart. It was dethroned Aug. 20 by Billie Ellish’s pop hit “Bad Guy,” according to Billboard Senior Director of Music Jason Lipshutz.
Without social media, “Old Town Road” probably would have been some catchy yet obscure song that most people would have written off. However, it was Lil Nas X’s savvy use of social media and meme culture that caused his song to remain relevant for almost five months.
“I promoted the song as a meme for months until it caught on to TikTok and it became way bigger,” said Lil Nas X in a Time article. His intentional utilization of meme culture resulted in over 2 million TikTok creators using the song in their Yee-Haw agenda content. Interestingly enough, it was Lil Nas X himself who was creatively thinking of ways to market “Old Town Road,” not some major corporation.
Meanwhile, the song ascended various Billboard charts including the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, Hot Country Songs and the Hot 100 charts. Soon after, the song was controversially removed from Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts, which led fans and other celebrities to question Billboard’s actions via social media. Some users claimed the removal was a result of racial motives, which holds elements of truth due to Billboard’s divisive and exclusive genres being problematic in and of themselves.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Billboard said, “‘Old Town Road’ by Lil Nas X does not currently merit inclusion on Billboard’s country charts…While ‘Old Town Road’ incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery, it does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.”
The outcry of support for Lil Nas X via social media further advanced the popularity of the song, which “caused the song’s stream count to spike upward over the following two weeks, by 188M streams, 146,000 song sales, and over 10,000 radio spins” according to a Forbes article.
Without the controversy attached to it, I doubt the song would have been able to maintain its number one spot for as long as it did. The commotion allowed people who generally wouldn’t care about his music to voice their opinions and become invested in Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road.”
As a result, Billy Ray Cyrus, who happened to be a fan of the song himself, hopped on the track, becoming the first artist to craft an “Old Town Road” remix.
After the first remix, Lil Nas X utilized Twitter to continue connecting and interacting with his fans. His quick-witted humor and consistent tweets only added to his likeability, which helped tremendously in maintaining his popularity. From this stemmed even more remixes, some of them including artists like RM from BTS, the Walmart Yodeling Kid, Young Thug and Diplo.
“Lil Nas X may have presented more remixes, and in a staggered fashion, than most. And [he] enlisted an impressive array of cross-genre acts to join in,” said Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard’s senior vice president of charts and data development.
Thus, each remix featured an artist who had new audiences who connected to “Old Town Road” in a new way. While some of the remixes were subpar and seemed excessive, the shocking amount of releases also supplemented the longevity of the song.
However, this ability to create remixes that reach a wider audience than just one traditional genre is because “the biggest shift in music that has come through social media has been through an increased level of interaction between musicians and their fan,” said Social Media Week article. “Now, the ability to present your music to a wide range of fans is attainable.”
This phenomenon isn’t singular, but so far, Lil Nas X is one of the first to do it successfully at such a high caliber because of social media. At the end of the day, I applaud his ability to market his song through social media. He utilized the resources he had to the best of his ability, and it paid off. If the long-term music scene doesn’t end up working out for Lil Nas X, he should definitely consider a career in social media marketing.
“You add clever marketing to a unique and catchy song that crosses genre and generational boundaries, and you end up with a smash hit,” said Pietroluongo. And while “Old Town Road” may be overplayed and annoying to many, it definitely was a smash hit.
