Billboard’s genre gatekeeping backfired when a duet with Billy Ray Cyrus broke streaming records

Evidence

Billboard responded to Lil Nas X’s incredible homegrown feat by kicking the song off the country charts. They explained, “While ‘Old Town Road’ incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery, it does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.” By this point, however, Lil Nas X had attracted enough industry bigwigs to his corner for a proper counterstrike. A month later, he released a new duet of “Old Town Road” with 1990s country superstar Billy Ray Cyrus—father of pop icon Miley Cyrus—leaning further into the hip-hop–country hybrid. The result shattered records, including a jaw-dropping 143 million streams in a single week. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 625