From there, it slowly caught on a couple of months in. Once it came out, he promoted the song nonstop by retweeting horse and cowboy memes with the song from his friends and followers. Quotable, with fun lines and lyrics that people want to use as captions.Unlike the other songs he put out that didn’t do well, it was the first time that he wrote a song to formulate a viral hit.Īccording to Lil Nas X, the viral song had to be: He crafted the song around cowboy culture, including the title itself, and injected western lingo throughout the lyrics. A lot of times songs that actually go viral aren’t done so intentionally. What exactly did Lil Nas X do to go viral?Īs I mentioned earlier, Lil Nas X claimed he purposely wrote “Old Town Road” to become a viral hit. That was an overview of what happened in case you were not familiar with his story. Lil Nas X then signed a deal with Columbia Records and got Billy Ray Cyrus on the remix of the song, which allowed it to be on the Billboard Country charts in April. Billboard disqualified the song because it “does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.” This is where the controversy began and took his viral success to the next level. This really helped the song take off.īy March 16th of this year, “Old Town Road” was generated enough streams to make its way into the Billboard charts at number 19. In February, Lil Nas X first uploaded the “Old Town Road” to the short-form video app TikTok. OLD TOWN ROAD IS TOP 50 COUNTRY ON SOUNDCLOUD!! /vtstydGpnU Twitter please help me get billy ray cyrus on this /UDoeiOZqc1Īs we are all aware of now, the irony of the tweet from this unknown kid in Atlanta at the time was that he did get Billy Ray Cyrus on the track months later.īy marketing and promoting his song through numerous memes, “Old Town Road” reached the top 50 Country list on SoundCloud around December 19th: A couple of days after the release, he sent the below tweet: He spent the whole month of November writing the song and released it early December. Lil Nas X deliberately wanted to make a viral song. Side Note: If you want to learn more about the story of the song from the perspective of the young producer who made the beat, Young Kio, you can check out this article. The banjos in the song, sampled from a Nine Inch Nails song, inspired him to write a song with a “loner cowboy runaway” vibe that reflected his current life situation. “Old Town Road” first came about when Lil Nas X bought the beat from a Dutch teen Young Kio through a website called for $30 dollars. Most of his songs didn’t get much attention compared to the funny memes, unrelated to music, that he would post. Within that span of time, Lil Nas X released about 16 tracks on his SoundCloud (his older songs have been removed by the label), including the original viral hit “Old Town Road” that he posted on December 3, 2018. The surprising thing about Lil Nas X’s rise to fame is that he started rapping for less than a year before blowing up. In this blog, I share his back story and all my thoughts that I think other musicians should learn from his viral success.īefore the Country Hot 100 controversy, where Billboard decided that the original version of the song didn’t meet the criteria to be categorized as country, “Old Town Road” was actually becoming a viral hit on its own. Even if you’re not trying to go viral, there are definitely things you can learn and apply to your own career. Stories like this are always interesting to dissect. In case for some strange reason you have not heard the song yet, here is the video for the remix version with Billy Ray Cyrus that took over popular culture: Did this rapper, who only started rapping since May 2018, in fact, figure out the secret to going viral? He also claimed to have intentionally created “Old Town Road” so that it would go viral. He has become a music star, posting photos on his Instagram hanging out with the biggest names in music and culture. The Atlanta artist ended up signing a record deal with Columbia Records and has released an EP so far through the label. This officially beats the Billboard record for the longest a song has been at number 1. This year, it is the college dropout, turned rapper Lil Nas X (Montero Lamar Hill), who took over the world with a country trap song called “Old Town Road” at the age of 19.Īs of this writing, the remix of the song has been streamed 400+ million times on Spotify alone and has stayed on Billboard’s Top 100 for 17 weeks straight. It seems like every year, there’s a story of some young artist who blows up because of a song going viral.
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