In popular music, the hype machine works in delightfully mysterious ways. Within two weeks, “Texas Hold ’Em,” the leadoff single from Bey’s Cowboy Carter LP, topped both the Hot 100 pop chart and Hot Country Songs. After he signed to major label Republic Records, ostensibly as a rapper, country tropes began gradually infecting his music—2018’s Lady Wrangler, mostly a trap-style …
In the summer of 1984, Lionel Richie, in the middle of an epic run of pop and R&B hits from his blockbuster album Can’t Slow Down, chose a fourth single from the LP that was very different from its predecessors. And in 1980, Richie penned “Lady” for Kenny Rogers, a dramatic, unclassifiable ballad that thanks to Kenny’s “Gambler” image topped …
In the nearly four months since I last had a new No. 1 hit to write about for Slate, there have been moments, I’ll admit, when I wondered whether Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” was a deep, real, culture-connecting No. Maybe this is the moment you realized “Old Town Road” was for real, too: Eat your heart out, “Baby …
Before I talk about the new No. Because Lil Nas X had tagged the song on digital services as country, “Old Town Road” was allowed onto Hot Country Songs for a single week—it made a notably high debut at No. Billboard’s official statement, repeated across the media, was that the song “incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery does not …
