Old Town Road, the viral rap song by Lil Nas X, has become the longest-running number one in US chart history, according to the latest Billboard chart.
The song has now topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 17 weeks, overtaking Luis Fonsi’s Despacito and Mariah Carey’s One Sweet Day, which both spent 16 weeks at number one.
Old Town Road had 72.5 million streams and 46,000 downloads in the past seven days.
Carey sent “love and congratulations” to Lil Nas X, after hearing her 26-year-old record had been smashed.
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. Keep living your best life! ? pic.twitter.com/3YorLCg3lx
— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) July 30, 2019
The rapper, a college dropout from Atlanta, whose real name is Montero Hill, recorded the song last October, using a backing track he bought online for $30.
With its blend of country music and trap bears, it achieved notoriety on the social media app TikTok, where thousands of people filmed themselves lip-syncing to the song in cowboy boots and ten-gallon hats.
By March, he had signed a deal with Columbia Records, and the song gained early press coverage after Billboard banned it from their country charts, for allegedly failing to “embrace enough elements of today’s country music“.
The decision attracted criticism over the conservatism of the country establishment, as well as accusations of racism. Billboard denied that race played any part in its ruling.
Nonetheless, the added attention helped Old Town Road rise up the main charts, eventually hitting number one in April.
Its tenure at the top has been extended by the astute tactic of releasing remixes and alternate videos to top up its streaming numbers.
The most popular remix features country star Billy Ray Cyrus, while other versions contain cameos from Young Thug and RM of the K-pop band BTS.
And while the original video was created using footage from the Wild West video game Red Dead Redemption, the “official” clip – released in the seventh week of its chart reign – is a big-budget production featuring cameos from Chris Rock, Diplo, Vince Staples and Rico Nasty.
All the different versions of the song are close enough to the original, and so count towards one single total in the US charts.
Catch the song below:
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