The song was supposedly not country enough. And then
Billy Ray Cyrus joined in.
Last week, “
Old Town Road,” a song by
Lil Nas X, divided the music industry. Sung by a young black man, with the kind of boomy trap beat familiar to hip-hop listeners, it included twangy banjos and lyrics filled with cowboy imagery. The record label behind the track, Columbia, proudly reported that it had appeared simultaneously on three of Billboard’s premier charts: Hot 100 for pop singles, Hot Country Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
Then Billboard removed the song from its country chart.
After the change was noted by Rolling Stone, Billboard announced that its chart experts had deemed the song insufficiently country. “While ‘Old Town Road’ incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery,” the trade publication said in a statement, “it does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.”
That decision — and the song’s conspicuous absence from most major country radio playlists — was sharply criticized as unfair and even racist, prompting a debate about genre and race in Nashville. The exclusion of the song from the country charts struck many as particularly odd, given the increasing influence of hip-hop on mainstream country, in the work of singers like Sam Hunt.
On Friday, Lil Nas X released a remix of the song with Mr. Cyrus, whose 1992 hit “Achy Breaky Heart” topped the country charts and was a prime example of a genre crossover smash. It even spawned its own pre-internet version of a viral dance.
On April 3, two days before the release of the remixed version of “Old Town Road,” Mr. Cyrus defended the country bona fides of Lil Nas X’s original version, adding to the pressure on Billboard and the Nashville establishment.
“When I got thrown off the charts,” Mr. Cyrus wrote on Twitter, “Waylon Jennings said to me ‘Take this as a compliment’ means you’re doing something great! Only Outlaws are outlawed. Welcome to the club!”
The video for the original version of the song, posted in December, has racked up more than 23 million views on YouTube.