Old Town Road
Lil Nas X
The song too country for country radio and too big for any chart to hold.
Old Town Road: the $30 beat that broke every chart rule in sight.
Lil Nas X bought the beat on BeatStars, wrote it alone in one sitting, and watched Billboard pull it from the country chart before it spent 19 weeks at No. 1 anyway. Country, trap, or something nobody had named yet?
A $30 beat and a joke that broke the internet
In December 2018, Lil Nas X was a college dropout with no label, posting memes online to pay rent. He bought a trap-banjo instrumental for $30 from Dutch teenager YoungKio on BeatStars, wrote Old Town Road in one sitting, and uploaded it to SoundCloud days later.
A costume, not a confession
Old Town Road is less a story than a costume: horses, Wranglers and tractors stand in for pure escapism, a fantasy of leaving a hard life behind. The biggest misunderstanding wasn't the lyrics, it was the genre. Because the track blended a banjo loop with trap drums, critics and chart gatekeepers couldn't agree on what to call it.
Did you know?
- Bought for $30 from Dutch teen producer YoungKio on BeatStars, the beat samples Nine Inch Nails' '34 Ghosts IV.'
- Billy Ray Cyrus recorded his remix verse in early 2019 after publicly backing the song amid the genre debate.
- Lil Nas X wrote and recorded the song alone in one December 2018 session, months before signing with Columbia.
- In March 2019, Billboard removed it from the Hot Country Songs chart, citing insufficient 'elements of today's country music.'
- The song spent 19 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the longest run atop that chart in its history.
- RIAA certified Old Town Road Diamond in the US, one of the rare singles to reach that tier.
- The Billy Ray Cyrus remix won the Grammy Award for Best Music Video at the 2020 ceremony.
- The song fueled TikTok's 2019 'Yeehaw Challenge,' one of the platform's first trends to cross into mainstream chart success.
