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Post by Admin on Aug 7, 2019 6:14:01 GMT
From releasing “Old Town Road” with Lil Nas X to now being named as one of the co-hosts for the 2019 CCMA Awards, you could say that it’s been a crazy year so far for Billy Ray Cyrus. “With Dallas he was just a natural man. Like it felt pretty good like right off the bat. As soon as he said he was an Olympic bowler, I was hooked,” Cyrus shares. One other person the 57-year-old has been fortunate enough to work this year was Lil Nas X. The duo released their hit collaboration “Old Town Road”, which has now been number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for 18 weeks straight. “When I’m dead and gone people will be talking about Lil Nas being one of the great thinkers of our time,” he says of the breakout musician. “He had never played a live show. More importantly what he did do was look into what makes music be able to go around the world, without a major record company, without a million dollars, without the whole promo team.” But, as it turns out, this collaboration almost didn’t happen, with Cyrus explaining that he initially didn’t know what he could add to the original track.  “I had got this message that Lil Nas was trying to get the song to me to hear it,” he says. “I didn’t know what I could do for it to be honest. I answered back and said, ‘Thank you for thinking of me but I don’t really know what I could do to this it’s already a monster smash. There’s nothing that I could do to it but mess it up.'” |
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Post by Admin on Aug 7, 2019 18:46:53 GMT
On first listen, Billy Ray Cyrus' biggest contribution to the cultural phenomenon that is "Old Town Road" is obviously his classic, gravely refrain (followed closely by a reference to "Fendi sports bras"). But listen more closely and you'll hear perhaps Cyrus' most important contribution.
"I always loved to whistle," Billy Ray Cyrus tells Taste of Country, "But really nobody let me whistle on a song until when I whistled on 'Old Town Road.' I got a note back from Lil Nas and [beat producer] Kio that said, 'That's fire.'"
That's right — near the very end of the song, you can hear Cyrus whistling a little ditty over the closing chords. And it's probably the most understated part of the performance, but clearly one Cyrus is proud of.
The rest of the team must have enjoyed it too, because the whistling made its way onto all subsequent remixes, including taking a prominent role on Diplo's remix.
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2019 17:50:23 GMT
Somehow, “Old Town Road” is still the #1 song in America. Two weeks ago, Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ leftfield country-rap smash broke the all-time Billboard record, sitting at #1 on the Hot 100 for a mind-boggling 17 weeks. And still, the song shows no signs of slowing down. It’s been weeks since the last “Old Town Road” remix — the one with BTS member RM — and months since the inevitable backlash should’ve sent the song plummeting back down the charts. It hasn’t happened. We are looking at an historical anomaly, a song that simply refuses to lose steam.  Today, Billboard reports that “Old Town Road” currently sits at #1 for a brain-shattering 19th week. Once again, nothing has come close to dethroning it. Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” another out-of-nowhere megahit, remains stuck at #2, marooned behind “Old Town Road” on the charts for a ninth week. (At this point, it seems safe to say that “Bad Guy” would be “Old Town Road” if “Old Town Road” had never existed. This summer has seen two different outsider-pop Cinderella stories; it’s just that one is much bigger than the other.) A pet theory: At this point, nobody want to be the one to dethrone “Old Town Road.” Early on, a whole ton of big names — Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, most famously Taylor Swift — released songs that came in at #2 but failed to knock “Old Town Road” down. All those victories over famous runners-up have been key to the “Old Town Road” mystique. And until the momentum of “Old Town Road” finally flags, it appears that the music industry has simply stopped releasing would-be smashes. This week’s highest-charting new entry, Ariana Grande and Social House’s “Boyfriend,” debuted at #8. And right now, it really seems like everyone is simply staying out of the way of a culture-capturing phenomenon. |
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2019 4:35:42 GMT
In Blake Shelton's new single with Trace Adkins, "Hell Right," the two singers take a lyrical jab at what is probably the song of 2019, Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road." What likely started out as a humorous songwriting idea has now sparked chatter as to whether Shelton's lyrics are offensive. The line in question is: “The girl from the small town took off the ‘Old Town,’ put on a little Hank Jr.," with Adkins replying “Thank God.” Variety points out that this could be construed as offensive, given that Nas is a black artist and Hank Williams, Jr. is well-known for his support of the Confederate flag. A spokesperson for Shelton told Variety that Shelton didn't mean any such harm with his song, stating that the singer only targeted "Old Town Road" for its ubiquitousness. “It’s absolutely not throwing any kind of shade at Lil Nas X at all. Blake says this literally has nothing to do with anything at all except how much the song is played. It could have been ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ or any other song.” The spokesperson also noted that Shelton talked to Billy Ray Cyrus, who appears on the most famous version of the oft-remixed song, and that Cyrus thought the lyric was funny.  Whatever the intentions behind the diss were, the fact remains that "Old Town Road" is unstoppable. The song set the record for most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and currently sits on top for the 19th week straight. |
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Post by Admin on Sept 4, 2019 17:43:13 GMT
The record-breaking smash led the competition from start to finish. Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, wraps at No. 1 on Billboard's 2019 Songs of the Summer chart, having led the list in each of the 14 weeks since the ranking made its annual return. The 20-position Songs of the Summer chart tracks the most popular titles based on cumulative performance on the weekly streaming-, airplay- and sales-based all-genre Billboard Hot 100 from Memorial Day through Labor Day (this year encompassing charts dated June 8 through Sept. 7).  "Road," on Columbia Records, ruled the weekly Hot 100 for a record-breaking 19 total weeks (April 13-Aug. 17). It also dominated the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, Hot Rap Songs and all-genre Streaming Songs charts for a record 20 weeks each. |
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