{"id":484338,"date":"2019-04-05T10:36:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T16:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=816658"},"modified":"2019-04-05T10:36:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T16:36:39","slug":"song-you-need-to-know-lil-nas-x-and-billy-ray-cyrus-old-town-road-remix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/song-you-need-to-know-lil-nas-x-and-billy-ray-cyrus-old-town-road-remix\/","title":{"rendered":"Song You Need to Know: Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus, \u2018Old Town Road (Remix)\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/IMG_4941W.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>Lil Nas X\u2019s lonesome cowboy trap ballad, \u201cOld Town Road,\u201d is a runaway hit that\u2019s been banished from the <em>Billboard<\/em> country charts almost as quickly as it broke them. Evidently the song <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-810844\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">isn\u2019t country enough<\/a> \u2014 which is in and of itself a ridiculous sentiment, given country music\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xdImDqbgc2g\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">recent years<\/a> spent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=crCqWK3SmRo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">gleaning influence<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bmZ9xRO7M9M\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Southern hip-hop<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of letting the country life of \u201cOld Town Road\u201d die there, Lil Nas X decided to amp it up: For the official remix, he called up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/billy-ray-cyrus\/\" id=\"auto-tag_billy-ray-cyrus\" data-tag=\"billy-ray-cyrus\">Billy Ray Cyrus<\/a>, a country veteran with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-country\/achy-breaky-heart-at-25-inside-billy-ray-cyrus-polarizing-hit-108958\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">his own history<\/a> of infuriating genre purists. Together, they\u2019ve created something magical. Cyrus\u2019 \u201cOld Town Road\u201d remix is a campy bit of country-trap that is somehow as earnest as it is utterly insane. The matrix is glitching, but maybe we don\u2019t need it to get fixed any time soon.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7ysFgElQtjI?version=3&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;autohide=2&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Cyrus\u2019 contributions are simple, and they don\u2019t change the song\u2019s fundamental aspects. \u201cOld Town Road\u201d was already a short, simple piece, and anything extra would be obscene. Showing his respect for Lil Nas X\u2019s craft, Cyrus merely sings his version of the chorus at the opening and returns at the end for what I can only describe as some of the best bars ever dropped by a country artist (sorry but not sorry to Luke Bryan\u2019s \u201cThat\u2019s My Kind of Night\u201d and Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6mFFBFYQYSs\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Thug Story<\/a>\u201c). I find it incredibly hard to believe that Billy Ray wrote this verse himself, but would also love to be proven wrong; it\u2019s almost too satisfying when Cyrus convincingly spits, \u201cHat down, cross town, livin\u2019 like a rock star\/Spend a lot of money on my brand new guitar\u201d over the spare, hollow repetition of the song\u2019s own guitar riff.<\/p>\n<p>This might be one of country\u2019s greatest outlaw moments, pairing two stars who can relate to being outcasts in the genre. In the same way Cyrus helped country turn over a brand new pop leaf, could \u201cOld Town Road\u201d fully turn trap-country into its own sub-genre? Let\u2019s at least hope this gives a second chance to \u201cOld Town Road\u201d and its country chart moment. Maybe some other country names will give it their own remix treatment as the song continues its inescapable rise. Florida Georgia Line, are you listening?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/old-town-road-remix-lil-nas-x-billy-ray-cyrus-816658\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lil Nas X\u2019s lonesome cowboy trap ballad, \u201cOld Town Road,\u201d is a runaway hit that\u2019s been banished from the Billboard country charts almost as quickly as it broke them. Evidently the song isn\u2019t country enough \u2014 which is in and of itself a ridiculous sentiment, given country music\u2019s recent years spent gleaning influence from Southern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-484338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 16:20:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}