Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” has broken one of the longest-standing records in music history.
“Old Town Road” is a song by American rapper Lil Nas X which was released on December 3, 2018. The song reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart but later the magazine disqualified it from being included on the chart on grounds that it did not fit the country genre.
But in the latest weeks, “Old Town Road” had 72.5 million streams in the United States and was played 7,200 times on the radio, according to Nielsen. The song became first hit on video-sharing app TikTok.
“I promoted the song as a meme for months until it caught on to TikTok and it became way bigger,” Lil Nas X told Time magazine.
“This is a kid who understands how the web works, how culture moves in 2019,” said Matty Karas, the curator of MusicRedef, an online news aggregator. “He understands the magic of how to make something go viral.”
Mariah Carey posted an image of passing the torch to Lil Nas and tweeted, “Sending love & congrats to @LilNasX on breaking one of the longest-running records in music history! We’ve been blessed to hold this record with a song that means a great deal to @BoyzIIMen and myself and has touched so many.point 377 |
Keep living your best life!“point 30 | 1
Lil Nas X thanked Mariah for her kind words tweeting: “EVERYBODY STREAM ALL 79 VERSIONS OF OLD TOWN ROAD!! LETS BREAK THE RECORD!!”
“You are a legend and an icon and I’m blessed to even have you acknowledging me right now!” he gushed. “growing up to your music & now having you talk to me directly is unreal!”
Lil Nas made a revelation of being a gay and announced the same on social media. His announcement received a huge support from fans.