{"id":484362,"date":"2019-04-06T11:35:59","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T17:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=818635"},"modified":"2019-04-06T11:35:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-06T17:35:59","slug":"billboard-may-revisit-decision-to-remove-old-town-road-from-country-chart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/billboard-may-revisit-decision-to-remove-old-town-road-from-country-chart\/","title":{"rendered":"Billboard May Revisit Decision to Remove \u2018Old Town Road\u2019 From Country Chart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lil Nas X<\/a>\u2018s \u201cOld Town Road\u201d is a sensation. The genre-bending \u201ccountry trap\u201d song has jumped from TikTok-aided hit to a cultural phenomenon (see: Ellen DeGeneres dancing in a wig and cowboy hat<\/a>), and its success may put it back on the Country charts after its initial removal<\/a>. The song is earning more daily streams than any other song in America on Spotify, and its video has over 26 million views on YouTube. The Friday release of the song\u2019s remix with Billy Ray Cyrus \u2014 which is great<\/a> \u2014 couldn\u2019t have hurt, either.<\/p>\n

Fueling the success of \u201cOld Town Road\u201d is the controversy surrounding it: Over a week ago, Billboard opted to remove the song<\/a> from its Country chart. According to the publication at the time, \u201cit does not embrace enough elements of today\u2019s country music<\/a> to chart in its current version.\u201d The decision to remove the song sparked a wide-ranging backlash, and led to an ongoing debate about genre, race and the music industry.<\/p>\n

Since then, the song has only become more popular. It\u2019s currently Number 15 on Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 and was the most-added song on pop radio last week. But its unexpected achievement adds additional scrutiny to its current genre classification. According to a Mediabase report, 33 country music stations played \u201cOld Town Road\u201d last week, and it received the co-sign of a recognized country star in Cyrus \u2014 both make the case that \u201cOld Town Road\u201d is a country hit, regardless of its chart classification.<\/p>\n

Despite the mounting pressure, Billboard will not be adding \u201cOld Town Road\u201d \u2014 or its remix \u2014 to its Country chart. However, according to a statement released to Rolling Stone<\/em>, the publication is still deciding how to classify the song. \u201cOur initial decision to remove \u201cOld Town Road\u201d from the Hot Country Songs chart could be revisited,\u201d a representative wrote. Read the statement in full below.<\/p>\n

Billboard offers category-specific charts simply as a tool for people in the music business to better gauge the success of songs relative to others in a given format. We are often times faced with difficult categorization choices.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDetermining which chart a song lives on is an ongoing process that depends on a number of factors, most notably the song\u2019s musical composition, but also how the song is marketed and promoted, the musical history of the artist, airplay the song receives and how the song is platformed on streaming services.<\/em><\/p>\n

Billboard welcomes the excitement created by genre-blending tracks such as Lil Nas X<\/a>\u2019s \u201cOld Town Road\u201d and will continue to monitor how it is marketed and how fans respond.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our initial decision to remove \u201cOld Town Road\u201d from the Hot Country Songs chart could be revisited as these factors evolve.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lil Nas X\u2018s \u201cOld Town Road\u201d is a sensation. The genre-bending \u201ccountry trap\u201d song has jumped from TikTok-aided hit to a cultural phenomenon (see: Ellen DeGeneres dancing in a wig and cowboy hat), and its success may put it back on the Country charts after its initial removal. The song is earning more daily streams […]<\/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-484362","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 17:29:28","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\/484362","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=484362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}