Backlash after Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" removed from Billboard Hot Country chart

My life is a movie
Bullridin' and boobies

Around that time, I had just watched that ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ movie. I just had that scene with Matthew McConaughey in my mind, I was just thinking about his lifestyle. That’s what I did for that line.

The banjo sound makes it all work.

The creek boys remix of Old Town Road is so damn good https://youtu.be/5bXrnvt8KjU

is this the first #1 song where the artist bought the beat from the producer after hearing it on youtube?

nah, desiigner found panda on YT as well

how bout Rihanna and the Numa Numa song

lol good pt

tbf numa numa was a standalone vid, that was before youtube was a colossal force

yeah, and that was also a sample of the original song--desiigner and nas x literally purchased the backing track they heard on YT.

isn't the backing track just "Ghosts 34"? is it really that simple?

no--a dutch producer named youngkio sampled the very beginning of ghosts 34, looped it, and added trap drums

I think I like this. Is it ok to like this?

its not ok to like anything you fool

no--a dutch producer named youngkio sampled the very beginning of ghosts 34, looped it, and added trap drums

Wonder if Goldenvoice will bring this guy/song out at Stagecoach this weekend.

i sing the cupcakke remix to myself all day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90aQaAfXeGs

the creek boyz remix is def worth hearing too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bXrnvt8KjU

this song is good i dont like any of these covers though

Love how a completely non-commercial Nine Inch Nails project can give Reznor/Ross an insane payday.

c'mon the cupcakke remix is great

Love how a completely non-commercial Nine Inch Nails project can give Reznor/Ross an insane payday.

― ... (Eazy), Thursday, April 25, 2019 8:38 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, "non-commercial" in that it wasn't an album with hits, but it did establish those two as like THE voice of modern ambient and they've been recruited for movie soundtrack projects that I would guess pay exponentially more than publishing on a streaming hit

lol the opening lines of the cupcakke remix are classic

Whatever happened to the Young Thug remix?

I'm obsessed with this choreography

https://www.facebook.com/PorschaColemanOfficial/videos/10156130072335770/

That is fuckin rad

IF OLD TOWN ROAD WAS A UK DRILL SONG pic.twitter.com/tCzqnp8Bp9

— TMC Tré (@iamTresor) May 2, 2019

video is here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Ov5jzm3j8

i love it

Missing one cameo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUUytUkMGO0

Much of the contemporary pop country that I've heard seems to only be country on the basis of having been marketed as country and doesn't actually sound a goddamn thing like country to my ears so it seems like if we start challenging the designation a whole lotta 'country' folks could be unhappy about what side of the divide they'll ultimately wind up on.

i was a little disappointed they couldn't get this dude

https://cdn1-www.musicfeeds.com.au/assets/uploads/Jimmy-Barnes-Scream-671x377.png

OL --

That's an argument made since at least the 1970s, as Charles Hughes has written about. No genre is policed for genuineness than country, and no genre has been most expansive about what belongs.

I'll refrain just this once from talking too much about a thing I know very little about (modern-day pop country, in this instance), but I'm talking more about discovering after the fact that a song without any identifiable country elements is being marketed as a country song rather than a traditionalist refusal to accept as country any song that doesn't strictly adhere to the genre's conventions.

is modern country "country"? maybe. do i like it? no.

old town road is fine tho

the distinction is that for at least the past several years, "country" has been defined as "pop radio if rap didn't exist." take something like "The Fighter" by Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood, or Jordan Davis' "Singles You Up" (ugh, the title)

(and I know people will come in here and say "oh but Sam Hunt likes Drake" or whatever, but he isn't Drake, which is the whole point)

Oh, that's interesting. Given my lack of engagement with pop music for...longer than I can remember, I hadn't even considered that the genre was becoming the musical equivalent of white flight. But it makes sense.

the distinction is that for at least the past several years, "country" has been defined as "pop radio if rap didn't exist."

The biggest country hit of the decade had Nelly on it.

Country radio sounds like "country made by people who listen to hip hop" quite often

one song with Nelly on it does not disprove it

(it goes both ways, too -- there are a lot of reasons you see so much Zedd ft. Maren Morris or whatever lately. reason one is "Meant to Be" was a hit and now everyone wants to copy it; reason two is that the country radio audience is, if not overtaking Top 40 (I forget what it is now, streaming has obviously muddied it), then coming very close in size; reason three is that given tomatogate and the like, female country artists probably find it more lucrative to gravitate toward pop; but I suspect another reason is that it gives Top 40 another stream of artists that aren't rap. not all stations, obviously, but given that there are plenty of stations that cut the rap verses from things like Kevin Rudolf songs, there is a demand for it.)

Yeah, the hip-hop influence is becoming pervasive, and – yes, country purists are upset by it – but they're losing the battle

I'm just gonna leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsNwDjUjbfs

A lot of Country songs, especially after "Dirt Road Anthem," have rap breakdowns. No need for Nelly even.

lol, I thought that Diplo playing the washboard was Kid Rock for a second

This is the number one country song right now...

I imagine whoever wrote the prechorus has probably heard Migos and Future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjBp30kjzTc

this is exactly what I was talking about with "oh, but they clearly heard Drake," good to know I predicted it exactly.

the other thing is that when people talk about hip-hop influence in country it's generally in terms of sound -- spoken-word sections, percussion, etc. -- but the sticking point for the sort of people outraged about Old Town Road is content. country lyrics aren't rap lyrics, and something like "Old Town Road" gets parsed as the latter. and obviously this is the source of endless hypocrisy -- if it were Toby Keith saying "bull ridin' and boobies" I'm sure people would be fine with it -- and if not outright racism then certainly influenced by race, but it's the motivation.

Can't believe a genre-music built on nearly 100 years of well-established tropes isn't embracing the content of another one whole hog

The other thing is that when people talk about hip-hop influence in country it's generally in terms of sound -- spoken-word sections, percussion, etc. -- but the sticking point for the sort of people outraged about Old Town Road is content.

He calls himself "Keith Urban" but in fact...

(I mean I wish I were cool enough that when I said the narrow slice of pop music that I love is better than ever, I was referring to something marginal or obscure… but I ain’t)

can we talk about Falco some more in here

this is frogbs calling

not to speak for dyl, but I didn’t take dyl’s comment (or this convo) to involve “what kids are listening to” on the dl, as much as “pop music” on the most mainstream level (Top 40 and such)…

― Wooly Bully (2005 Remaster) (morrisp), Tuesday, January 16, 2024 9:01 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yea but per Tim’s comment, plus my own, I don’t think top 40 measures what top 40 measured before

I’m not sure teens were listening to all those Diane Warren chart toppers in the 90s either.

The Aerosmith and Toni Braxton ones for sure.

Yeah I didn't take it to be about "measuring" as much as the quality of what is right there in front of us, where it's always been (also, I mean, Duo Lipa is actually v popular)

(not popular enough that I know how to spell her name apparently.. lol)

fwiw, the "the good shit is over here now" line doesn't conflict w/dyl's argument, either

That whole “algorithms are taking over pop” thing felt true to me, at least to a certain extent, in the 2010s, but not now. Plus *smug benevolent father figure face* I have loads of conversations with actual young people about music (bcz DJing) and no two people are the same in terms of what they’re into and why; their knowledge and range, particularly with lyrics, regularly staggers me. I’ve also noticed more awareness from 30+ people about new/current pop. But I’m UK, so maybe it’s different elsewhere.

I sometimes think you folks sometime just make up genres to fuck with me.

Like, are y'all into Blompcore? Smoosh-rap? Flomp-hop? Trip-trap?

In the 90s my friends and I used to invent indie acts and nonexistent labels, because there was no central source of truth. Haven't you heard of The Baby Wipes? They started out on the Rectal Snot label, in Portland. But then they totally sold out when they signed with Megascope.

related, my friends in freshman year of college had a fake band called The Storm Petrels. we even made trucker hats with their name

i recall years ago on here when some of us pretended that Denny Lethargy made an album with Sonny Sharrock (the two never actually collaborated.)

I really dug the Storm Petrels' first EP, Promising Debut.

But I was not into their second release, Disappointing Followup.

did adult contemporary just kinda disappear?

I feel like nowadays there's less room for the David Foster-esque pop

Taylor Swift is effectively adult-contemporary now

We've got an A/C station here -- the cross-campus shuttle blasts it. I'll hear the softer '80s and '90s, stuff like Taylor Swift and Sam Smith and the Fray.

ours really leaned into the Elton John/Dua Lipa mashup

did adult contemporary just kinda disappear?

That's Tycho now

The Clear Channel A/C station in Houston made a hard pivot from Easy Listening (Bolton, David Foster stuff etc.) to "Uptempo Classics To Get You Through Your Workday", which ranges from '70s Disco hits to six month-old Pop hits (I found this interesting that they never played anything brand new), and generally leave the Easy stuff to Delilah's syndicated show in the evenings.

DUa Lipa gets played on the A/C station here too. But then she gets played everywhere.

Plus there's that Argylle thing about to hit in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of which – OMG, Swifties: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/taylor-swift-argylle-author-matthew-vaughn-rumors-1235873834/

Yeah I didn't take it to be about "measuring" as much as the quality of what is right there in front of us, where it's always been (also, I mean, Duo Lipa is actually v popular)

― Wooly Bully (2005 Remaster) (morrisp), Tuesday, January 16, 2024 10:41 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and im saying some people are just old and 'whats in front of you' is different than what was in front of you at 16

but also — and I think this point is being underestimated—I think more people than ever are *invested in* underground, mid tier, non-pop music, than might have been in the 12-CD-fan days. The 12-CD fan of the 90s now has their own Spotify playlist of stuff that might actually include some relatively obscure act—that act just happens to sound like the 12-CD popular level act they already like.

The point I'm making is that everyone's fandom has shifted, to a stage where being a 'casual music' fan by its nature includes liking some 'not that popular' shit

so when I say that what the pop charts are 'measuring' is different, its not just the pop charts ... the very meaning of obscurity or underground is different ... the entire framework of experiencing 'new music' is different..and I think suggesting this is just a continuation of how things used to be is missing how different things really are

OK but I didn't think we were talking about the "charts" here (thread title aside)

I think what's being exposed to some extent is how retro pop music *always* was ... something like the modern milwaukee rap song sounds 'brand new' to most ears, but its actually based on the 'low end' sound which existed in 2010 or earlier and was just off-board for online music fans... likewise peso pluma sounds new to ppl who don't listen to narcocorridos and its a 'new sound' in the pop space but not a new sound if you listened to popular mexican music for years ... so ppl can marshal this information to make any argument they want, ie "everything is retro now!!!" [spaceman meme] it always was

there's nothing new about the birth of hip hop ... this is just pigmeat markham all over again smh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRS62nccwmw

teenagers absolutely were listening to diane warren ballads in the 90s

did adult contemporary just kinda disappear?

as a distinctive style, yes it is basically endangered. the vast majority of songs on the ac airplay chart are songs that were on the pop airplay chart months before -- so the chart is basically the more milquetoast subset of the pop chart, which is itself boring/stagnant. this past year the exceptions were from artists like p!nk, nsync and lewis capaldi but none were particularly big in general or even at the ac format. there are also a few new christmas songs that come along every year, but during that time the audience reach of new songs at the format declines precipitously bc the playlists lean even more heavily on old songs than usual during that time -- new christmas songs take years to properly break. (there was one by david foster this year!)

anyway the way pop music operates (specifically in america!) absolutely is different now than it used to be, yes i am getting old but the differences are measurable and consistent at least if we're talking abt radio. and yes, shame on me for still paying attention to that hoary old distribution method but i do see it as unfortunate as there are aspects to the radio-listening experience that i do think are unique compared to just clicking thru social media or playlists. i legitimately enjoyed mainstream radio for at least a decade of my life and am sad that most stations in this country seem to think that those aspects simply can no longer be replicated (even tho other radio in other countries still manages it)