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

I’m not lukewarm on the song Montero; it’s bad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWjnC8HSRdU

lol of course it's fucking jolene

hostile

it's ok. i think he's getting better as a singer maybe. i'm still not sure if it's refreshing or disappointing that he's like an above-average karoake singer.

That's what I concluded too.

I have more of an issue with the slow buildup of the backing band than I do with his performance; it's not like he's this amazing vocal or even idiosyncratic talent you want to hear isolated, let the band support him plz

lol that was supposed to read "amazing or even idiosyncratic vocal talent", I would like to help fund an edit button

really lackluster jolene there. i suppose i should try the new album.

No one should be allowed to cover "Jolene" anymore. It's reached the status of "Hallelujah" or "Heroes" - it's completely wrung out.

going on Maury is just another viral stunt from him, right

impressively, Old Town Road Remix is apparently no longer his most streamed track

My 7-year-old sang most of Old Town Road in the car last week, no idea how/where he learned the lyrics.

It was included in the kids vaccine

The man is an icon

the prophecy has been fulfilled. pic.twitter.com/lC2PPb5l6W

— ✟ (@LilNasX) January 12, 2024

sure the pop industry has always been about incremental reiterations of past successes but the absolute rut we are stuck in right now is so sad to see. dua fucking lipa the queen of barely passable 6/10 'bops' that all reheat whatever the least-boring aspect of her last hit was is considered an exciting top-tier artist, the biggest hits of the past several years all make an effort to remind listeners of the exact same #1 hit from the 80s and those that don't do so either are built around some corny classic hits safelist sample or interpolate aspects of multiple past hits so the sort of person who likes looking for taylor swift 'easter eggs' can feel clever (speaking of that artist, no wonder her current imperial phase is bolstered in large part by rerecordings of her old albums)

i hate this timeline, i'm embarrassed for these artists and i am not mad when they fall flat on their faces commercially as they seem to do about 50% of the time bc no one in this industry has any clue anymore

Sir this is a Wendy’s

huh

Enjoyed Chris Molanphy's "Old Town Road" book--very good on how Billboard's Top 100 works (and how it's evolved over the years), if that interests you.

dyl, I don’t know which country you live in, but my take on big hits on the UK pop chart over the last couple of years is the exact opposite - ten years ago, I’d have been broadly making your criticisms, but it feels like something has shifted over here, such that pop feels a lot more diverse and creative and surprising. I’m more excited about the UK pop chart now than at any time since 2010.

I’m assuming you haven’t had the same Morgan Wallen song in the top ten for nearly a year

yeah i'm in the formerly culturally influential united states

And it's not even one of the good Morgan Wallen songs xpost

I feel roughly the same as you, dyl, tho i have just gone seeking my “pop” music elsewhere.

sorry, can we rewind here, and this is probably something super obvious that I'll feel dumb for asking but dyl, what does the state of pop in 2024 have to do w/ Lil Nas X?

I think this thread started more as a critique of Billboard rules than a dedicated Lil Nas X thread.

did you hear the song/watch the video? i'm sry my post was a bit deranged but it was very much a response to the latest offering from alleged marketing genius lil nas x

lol ok

I thought the take on Lil Nas X was that here was finally a superstar who didn’t debut two decades ago

Sir this is a Wendy’s

you misspelled "booming post"

Pop music is still better now than it was in the 00s, maybe I just hated myself more then

I enjoy when dyl goes off, but I also feel like pop music – or at least the sliver of it that I love & choose to engage with – is better than at any other point in my lifetime. Granted, I don’t listen to Top 40 radio or anything; I’m sure that’s pretty tedious… but then it always kind of has been, no?

Morrisp, I don't think Top 40 radio was tedious in the years 1977 through 1986.

I am certain that it's a total coincidence that my own personal tween/teen years happened to be the precise era in which radio was good. Surely no one else ever has had this phenomenon occur. Sometimes I gaze wistfully into the middle distance, feeling mild pity for those poor unfortunate souls whose youths did not coincide with good music.

It's funny - when I think back to the mid-'80s (grade school), the time I probably listened to Top 40 radio the most, these are the only songs that specifically survive in my memory (in terms of, "I can recall the radio playing them at a particular time/place"):

Eddie Murphy - Party all the Time
John Waite - Missing You
Falco - Rock Me Amadeus
Sly Fox - Let's Go All The Way

(Apparently these are all from 1985... may be something there about neurons firing at a specific childhood age)

Anyway, I know I heard, uh, lots of other stuff as well... but imagine that adult culture mavens of the day weren't enthusiastic about this particular slice of pop music!

Oh, “La Isla Bonita” is another (that one’s ’86)

"Missing You" did get a lot of positive attention from older people, I remember. Like I recall a high school teacher of mine saying, "now that's a good song." Andy Warhol even mentions it approvingly in his Diaries.

The others you listed, not so much

my middle school years were 97-99, and what I loved about pop radio was how much of a grab bag it was - you had a swing revival, huge Latin pop stars, boy bands, alt rock, country, "Mambo No. 5", whatever the hell Chumbawamba and the Barenaked Ladies were, stuff that heavily sampled disco like "Steal My Sunshine", and it all had this crossover appeal too. I mean sure some of it sucked but there sure as hell was a lot more variety than you've got now. which is why I loved Old Town Road, like its not something I'd want to own the record of but I appreciate such a weird crossover tune where nobody can quite explain what makes it so catchy. it reminds me of being a teenager.

not crazy about any of the tunes he's done since, or more accurately I just don't remember any of them. I appreciate the way he unapologetically keeps poking at conservatives - hell even I think his desecration of religious imagery goes a bit far, but I still respect him for doing it

I'm sorry wait do we not like "Rock Me Amadeus" now????

always got the impression that people mocked "Rock Me Amadeus" a lot at the time but the song was so hooky that it ultimately won out in the end. sort of an "Ice Ice Baby" situation.

kind of disappointed the American copies of Falco 3 didn't have the original radio mix on it, but rather some 9 minute remix, which at least hilarious has a section listing off all of Wolfgang's major accomplishments and the years they occurred, ending with "1985: Austrian rock star Falco records ROCK ME AMADEUS!!"

Yep! I remember that section playing specifically, on the car radio… Lol

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres86.php

Had no idea late-model Stevie Winwood was so beloved by the Pazz & Jop crowd. Anyway, "Higher Love" way too high, "Walk Like an Egyptian" way too low.

In about 1980-1986 I loved absolutely everything emanating from my bedside clock radio. It was an intoxicating mix. Casey Kasem just smoothly rolled it all out for us.

You would hear the Clash (at least, "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go") and then Cyndi Lapuer and then Menudo or Madonna and then the Boss and then Cameo and then "Valley Girl" and then "My Darling Nikki" and then you get Pat Benatar or "The Glamorous Life" or "Life in a Northern Town" or "One of Our Submarines" or "Everyday I Write the Book" or whatever.

All of it was magical.

Well yeah but you were also young. (I mean, that was my phase of top 40 radio listening/chart countdowns as well, almost to the year -- 81 to 86 in my case, ten to fifteen years old. Do I value it? Very much so and a lot of it due to the (relative, conditional, hardly universal) kaleidoscopic nature. But also because I was that age! It overdetermines my cultural memory as a result, and that often frustrates me.)

Several hours ago I had an exchange with a certain rock critic/author on my FB wall on this very point: while he loved Tara Kemp's "Hold You Tight," I hesitated: it came out the summer before my senior year when at least half the AT40 boasted a hook, lyric, vocal, and aural effect worth savoring. Strip nostalgia away and it's sound, solid track.

But we need nostalgia too.

Frogbs, the local radio stations sometimes got to do promo cuts that were like: "1985: Q107 was the first to play... ROCK ME AMADEUS."

The Eddie Money song "I Wanna Go Back," from 1986, also had a section that was editable. Instead of "I... was listenin' to the radio," it could instead say "I... was listenin' to Q107."

Pretty sure that the Huey Lewis song "The Heart of Rock and Roll" had radio edits allowing local stations to put their cities in.

SAINT LOUIS! DETROIT! SCRANTON PA! FAYETTEVILLE!

But we need nostalgia too.

I absolutely don't mind it but I don't want to live there. I kinda think of it this way: there's a clutch of artistic work encountered from my youth that I still have an active interest in one way or another, like 'pop music' widely defined as such -- Peanuts, Star Wars and its derivations, and probably unsurprisingly Tolkien given my podcast. While Tolkien is the one whose work I end up engaging with the most regularly now precisely due to said podcast -- it's been almost five years of low key but still steady rigor and reflection -- the others I mention also benefit from me looking back that way, as I tend to do, recognizing where I was at, considering the lingering impact, but not pretending to be a naif in first full flush. What I *can* do in turn is recognize how so many things catching my interest and attention now, whether wholly new or encountered belatedly for the first time, result as a part of a continuum from those early fascinations. So you could say it's less nostalgia for the cultural product as nostalgia for the cultural process, perhaps.

I mostly agree: I've been in too many battles over every revision to the book on phony Beatlemania. I didn't want to deny my humanity, though. It sometimes needs affirming.

Ned Ragget, I sympathize. You are a professional and (I gather) you feel a moral duty to analyze art on its own merits. As opposed to how most civilians get to experience art: "this is what reached me in my formative years, when I was most porous to art."

Me? I am a civilian and I am also just too old and tired to care. "Yep, I admit that I love the music that I heard when I was in middle school."

Guilty as charged. Judge me negatively if you wish; I don't give a shit. And no, I am not gonna go research lo-fi trap-dance-crunk-core (or whatever) just because it is what the kids are into these days.

I don't think you can analyze art "on its own terms." Interpretation depends on context and attitude and setting, thus re-engaging a beloved album will by necessity deal with nostalgia.