How 'Old Town Road' became a savage journey to the heart of the American dream
Billy Ray Cyrus, Lil Nas X, and Cardi B perform at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Photo credit: Scott Roth/Invision/AP/Shutterstock. Just a couple of months before Lil Nas X was born, the Bone Thugs N Harmony posse topped the rap charts for eight weeks in 1999 with “,” where Krayzie Bone and Layzie Bone saddle up to a harmonica solo and a Kenny Rogers hook. They rob a bank with horse rustler Thug Queen, then celebrate with moonshine at the saloon.
Everybody wants in on the yeehaw mentality in the Lil Nas X era. Even Bruce Springsteen, who made the bizarre yet awesomefor his new album, riding down Old Town Thunder Road with his horses on the baccstreets. When His Bossness wants to ditch the ’69 Chevy for a pony ride, you know things are serious. It’s official: The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance yeehaw drive.
It’s significant this is happening in 2019, when a cowboy hat suddenly doesn’t mean what it used to. It used to be that cowboy culture was right-wing turf, ever since a Hollywood Western B-movie star named Ronald Reagan. But these days, the commander of the racist right is a New Yorker with no Southern twang at all, and his soldiers’ favorite headgear is the red MAGA cap.
It makes perfect sense that Nas gets his Nashville spurs from Billy Ray Cyrus. He also reached Number One with his first hit, “” which set off the same debates over what counts as “real” country. To Nashville gatekeepers, Billy Ray was a poseur with a ponytail. He beefed with Travis Tritt, who accused him of turning country into an “ass-wiggling contest.” And like Trent Reznor, Billy Ray has a David Lynch connection, after.
The most country touch Billy Ray adds is his instinctive nostalgia, when he croons, “Wish I could roll on back to that Old Town Road” — Lil Nas X sings in the future tense, while Billy Ray looks to the past. “I think Lil Nas is a hero who came along when the world needed a hero,”. “At a time when we’re so divided, he’s a light in the universe.” Could anyone disagree? With “Old Town Road,” Lil Nas X rounds up all the wild horses in American culture, and rides them till he can’t no more.
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