It was an appropriate platform for the pair, considering the DJ just released an uptempo remix of the song, as well as his own country music project, Thomas Wesley, with the debut single So Long featuring Cam.Let me tell you right now, its a country song, he said, before introducing the pair to the stage.In an attempt to recreate the viral hit, the duo swayed in their cowboy hats as they performed the number, with Diplo offering the lively audience with the outro to his new mix of the chart-topper.
![]() ![]() Since its release, the song has been mixed by the likes of Young Thug and cupcakKe, while being covered by Keith Urban. Help Privacy Policy Terms of Use Learn More. Old Town Road Remix Instrumental Trial Complex AndBut what has made it explodeleaping from No. 15 to No. 1 this weekis, it must be said, the widespread media attention over the songs rejection by the Country Industrial Complex and Billboards chart-categorization controversy. Photos by Columbia Records; Matt WinkelmeyerGetty Images for the Recording Academy. Old Town Road Remix Instrumental How To Explain TheThis is the best way I know how to explain the socio-cultural pickle Billboard has gotten itself intoan own goal so messy, it has dragged the music-industry bible into headlines about race and genre in the mainstream press. As I wrote for Slate in early 2015, Uptown Funk is an unabashed, top-to-bottom homage to turn-of-the-early-80s RB, from Rick James to Zapp to the Gap Band. Its so indebted to that sound that the Gap Bands members actually made a legal claim against Ronson and Mars and won themselves a belated writing credit. Speaking as a music critic, I thought not letting the song onto the RBHip-Hop chart was almost indefensible. Basically, Uptown Funk would have been No. RBHip-Hop chart for a ridiculous period of time. To be exactbased on my understanding of Billboards genre-charts methodologyhad Ronson and Mars been allowed on that chart, Funk would have commanded it for 19 weeks, December 2014 through April 2015, an all-time RB chart record. This run by Funk would have preemptively beaten future record-setter One Dance by Drake, an 18-week topper in 2016, and it would have beaten both The Honeydripper by Joe Liggins and Choo Choo ChBoogie by Louis Jordan, each of which spent 18 weeks on top in the 1940s, when this chart was calledI kid you not Race Records. When I checked with Billboard in early 2015, asking if it would retroactively allow Uptown Funk onto the chart, now that it was breaking on urban radio in fact, by April 2015, the song actually ranked fifth at RBhip-hop stations it affirmed it would not, saying it still considered the song a pop hit that is crossing over to RB radio. Again, I could see why it was reluctant to grandfather it in: If it had reclassified Uptown Funk as RB at that late date, it would have, bizarrely, debuted at No. ![]() This week, Road hurtled to No. Hot 100, No. 1 on Hot RBHip-Hop Songs, and absolutely nowhere on Hot Country Songs, because its not (currently) allowed on that chart. The kerfuffle over whether Hills self-described country trap tune should be allowed on the flagship country chart bothers me toobut what angers me, as a chart analyst, probably isnt what angers you. The controversy that gets my dander up is over what genre charts measure in the digital era, and who gets to decide what goes on them. Old Town Road may or may not be country, but there should be a way for the country audience to collectively decide that, the same way audiences clearly, organically decided Uptown Funk was an RB song. And not only are there no genre limitations on the kinds of songs that can appear on the Hot 100, but at this pointblessedlyno one is up in arms that the Hot 100 is topped by this song. Lil Nas X, a onetime enlistee in Nicki Minajs fan army (something he denies) who built up a sizable online following, began issuing music on (where else) SoundCloud about a year ago. Road landed in Decembera song Hill built on producer YoungKios sample of 34 Ghosts IV, an unusually twangy, but typically somber, 2008 instrumental track by Nine Inch Nails. You cant make this stuff up, folks: This is now Trent Reznors first No. The charm of the song is its self-awareness, its pastichethe lyrics sound like a first draft from a kid writing a cowboy ditty for a cultural studies class, dutifully checking off references to a horse, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots, not to mention that old town road. Meanwhile, notwithstanding its thumping beat, Road is about as much a rap song as Drakes Hotline Bling was: Hill sings through the whole thing. In an era when folks still insist on calling Post Malone a rapper, XHills descriptor country trap is actually pretty apt. Billboard reports that the airplay audience for Old Town Road is a decent, still-modest 11.9 million, too small to appear on the Radio Songs component of the Hot 100. Its download sales are a solid 22,000 for the week, ranking third on Digital Songs although it must be said that, at 1.29 per MP3, the 1:53 running time of the original mix of Road must make it one of the priciest per-second downloads of the digital era. Far better to play it on a loop on Spotifyand sure enough, its on Streaming Songs, where the song is a blockbuster: 46.6 million streams last week, a leap of 60 percent from the week prior. It got a huge boost in January on TikTok, a Vine-like short-video service that built a YeehawChallenge around the song. By March, that meme was infectious enough to get Old Town Road onto the charts, where it climbed into the Top 40, then the Top 20. But what has made it explodeleaping from No. No. 1 this weekis, it must be said, the widespread media attention over the songs rejection by the Country Industrial Complex and Billboards chart-categorization controversy.
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