[Brandon] Hello, I'm Brandon Polite. I am an
associate professor of Philosophy at
Knox College.
[John] My name is John Dyck. I'm a
postdoctoral fellow at Auburn University,
and I'm going to try to convince Brandon
today that "Old Town Road" is country song.
[Brandon] And I'm going to put up the best
Socratic objections I possibly can
because I don't think it is a country
song; I think it's a hip-hop song and, in
fact, a novelty hip-hop song.
And so just to begin
a first objection, and this
is one that I don't buy into
that much. By and large,
at least for the past 50 or so
years, country music has been
predominantly, if not exclusively, music
by white people for white people--
white Southerners in particular. And
that may be a reason that
someone would think that this
just sort of precludes the song from
counting as country: Lil Nas X is
African American. How would you
respond to someone who argued that way?
Again, this this isn't the way I would
want to argue, but someone might.
So, how would you respond to that one?
[John] Totally. So, I think like race and country
music got really linked in interesting
ways. And I think--so,
Billboard removed "Old Town Road" from the
Hot Country--it was that number one, they
took it down; and I think a lot of
people think that race played a
role here. So, I mean, there's no doubt
that we think of country music as a
white genre, but a lot of
research in the past 10 or
20 or 30 years shows that
country music really has been
constructed for us to think about
this way. But when we look to the actual
history of country music, it has
roots--heavy roots--in African American
music. So, like A. P. Carter of the Carter
Family learned a lot of music for black
churches. Jimmy Rogers, a foundational
guitarist, learned his guitar style
from black musicians on the railroad.
So, Karl Hagstrom Miller, this
historian, shows that--in this book,
which I can't remember what it's called
right now... I think *Segregating Sound*--
shows that music in the
South was heavily integrated and the
kind of music that country music grew
out of was heavily, heavily
integrated music. Whereas when country
music developed, country music executives marketed
some albums as what they called
"hillbilly records," because the name
country wasn't a thing, and they marketed
other records as "race records." And you
can see that when black musicians tried
to record country music they
would promote them as in the
race records section of the catalog. They
would try to encourage them to record
sort of more blues-style
music. So, there's this kind of very
conscious effort on that part of country
marketing in its early years to make
country musical a white kind of music. And
I think that's why we perceive it as
white. But the point is it's
not really white. In fact, country
music has African American roots.
The banjos are an African
instrument. And just one
other thing is you can talk
about black country music performers
through the years, like Charlie Pride... um, why
am I blanking on her name?
That's not good. But you can also
think about... There are more
African American country artists now
than probably ever before. So, Jimmy Alan,
Kane Brown, Blanco Brown, Mickey Guyton.
So, I think we are seeing a
resurgence of black country music artists.
[Brandon] Okay, cool. So, the race factor
doesn't automatically discount the
possibility that "Old Town Road"
is a country track.
[John] Totally. And, in fact,
if we say that it does, then we play
into like just buying the way that it's
been sort of marketed in this
flimsy, fake constructed way, if
that makes sense.
[Brandon] Yeah, yeah. Cool.
So, moving on to the big objection.
Just in terms of "Old Town Road"'s sound,
it sounds like a hip-hop track.
In terms of its lyrical structure,
it sounds like a hip-hop track.
Country music songs often tell stories, but
there's no real story here.
The lyrics are very
prototypical of hip-hop. Even in terms of
its production history, where
the song was released remix
after remix after remix, that's
typical of hip-hop. That's, to my
mind at least, not typical of country.
So, in terms of those things,
it doesn't seem to neatly fit into the
country category. To me at
least, it makes more sense to
classify this as a hip-hop song that's
using some "country grammar"--to
to reference Nelly, I guess. 
(I didn't intend that, by the way.)
[John] That's amazing.
[Brandon] I just amused myself there.
The song references country things. It seems to be commenting on country, if not outright mocking
country music. It seems to me
that's a hip-hop track that's
commenting on or appropriating or
mocking country music--it's sort of about
country music and the country lifestyle, but
it isn't itself country music. So, that's
the big objection. And there all sorts of
directions we can go with this. So,
I'll give it to you to lead us somewhere.
[John] Alright. Just feel free to
hop in at any point. So, let's start
with this point about the lyrical
content. Well, just
on the story point. When 
the song came out, a lot
of country artists were like, "Well, it's a
good song. But I don't think it's a
country music song because country music
songs tell stories, and this doesn't
tell story." But, for one thing, a
lot of country music songs don't tell
stories. Take Randy Travis's
"Forever and Ever, Amen":
No story. It's just a promise. You know
nothing about his life. Now,
what does it take for something to be a
story? I mean, people say country music's
about stories, but that's true only
if you have a fairly loose definition of
stories. So, for one thing, not
all country music songs tell stories. But
also, I think, "Old Town Road" tells a story.
The first verse is about, you
know, he doesn't have a Porsche,
he's riding his horse; and
in the second verse--and on the
Genius lyrics, in the Genius webpage for
the song Lil Nas X talks about this--in
the second verse, he's made it. He's
successful now. He doesn't have a
Maserati original... But anyways,
he's drinking lean and cheating on his
girl. The way Nas tells the
story is like, "In the first verse,
I'm striving, and in the second verse
I've made it, like I'm living this
glamorous lifestyle in Hollywood." Or
not entirely successful; he's kind
of morally messed up. So, there's
some development of the character.
[Brandon] So, you want to say that there's a story
sort of implied within the lyrics,
and if country music is music that tells
a story, well this sort of fits the
minimal definition of what it is to be a
story. So, the fact that it
has something of a story,
at least from the standpoint of
certain country artists who objected to
it counting as country,
it doesn't fit this country. But what
about just the sound of it? The use
of sampling, and the way the 
bass [sic] drops in, and the ad-libs, and
so forth. That doesn't seem to be
country to me. Just the
sound of it is hip-hop to me. It screams
hip-hop. It doesn't scream country,
despite some of the samples and
so forth.
[John] Totally. Okay.... Okay, yeah. So, the
sonic elements: it does that sound like a
hip-hop song, you might think. Okay. So,
a couple things there. One thing is that
country music is leaning more towards
hip-hop in the way it sounds. So,
the fact that it has these markers of
hip-hop doesn't necessarily disqualify
it, I think. The fact is that
country music--with artists like
Florida Georgia Line and Sam Hunt and,
Jason Aldean, and...
I'm blanking on name today--
is just sounding more and more hip-hop.
But me lay out a couple things in it
that I think sound country. One is the
sample has a banjo, which okay. Oh! I never
got to the irony point in the last thing.
We can get to that later. So, for one
thing, the sample is a banjo. You might
think like, "Oh, it samples a Nine Inch
Nails song," something you'd mentioned [in a
previous conversation]. But think
about Johnny Cash! One of his
most famous recordings is of "Hurt," which
is a Nine Inch Nails song. So, there's
some kind of country/Nine Inch
Nails connection.
Okay, whatever. That's not my best argument.
Here's what I think makes it country
more than anything. The lyrical content
it's about horses and boots.
It makes all these references to
rural features. But also
we're talking about sonic stuff. The
like vocal articulation, I think, is a
kind of [country] articulation. So, for one
thing, the melody.
You can just sing the melody
of the chorus, "Do do do do-do do
do do," like that sounds country to me. But
there's also certain vocal inflections
that I think make it country. Namely,
the way the voice falls down in a
typically kind of like "masculine" way;
that's very typical of country. So, think
about the verses; think about... I can't
even remember the first verse, but it
goes "Do-do do-do do / Do-do do-do
do," that "do," the dropping at the
end of the line I think is very typical
of country music. And also the
accent that he makes; he's got this
drawl that's very country. So, I think
there are those sonic elements.
I also found some
evidence from his intentions that speaks
to the fact that I think he sees
the song as a country song.
So, in a New York Times--they have those
videos on "Anatomy of a Song" where
they're interview artists--and he
says--I watched one of these late last
night--and he said, "Yeah, I see it as
hip-hop and country," but he says, "I see it
as more of a country song." So, he
does see it sort of more in -- . And
something else, I saw...
So, the song was released in, I think, February
or March of 2019. In December of 2018, he
posts on Twitter "I'm about to change
country music with this video" with his
clip of the song on top of a video of
this cowboy dancing. So, I think he
does see it as a country track.
So, I started with the
sonic stuff, but I also think I
discovered this stuff about his
intentions last night that you might
think is relevant.
[Brandon] So, he's a hip-hop artist who sort of shifting
gears to try to change the world of country?
[John]  *laughs* One reason that
speaks to him being a country artist is that he's
collaborating with Billy Ray Cyrus--he's got
other people: Billy Ray Cyrus and Mason
Ramsey. I will say I put on the song this
morning just to listen to it, and to your point
after "Old Town Road"--my Spotify is on
automatic, and so usually on automatic
it'll lead you to a similar song in the
same genre--and to your point, it did play
a song by, a track by DaBaby right
after; so, like, super hip-hop. so Spotify
[Brandon] Spotify wants to think of it as a hip hop song.
[John] Spotify is on your side.
[Brandon] See! Spotify is with me.
[John] The algorithm agrees.
[Brandon] Finally! This is the day I've been waiting for.
[John] I forgot what I was going to say.
[Brandon] Okay. If this counts as country,
this would be his first country track?
[John] Yeah.
[Brandon] So, that's one thing.
It's not to say that non-country artists can't make a
country track. I mean, Ted Gracyk
pointed out to me that
on Rolling Stones albums there are country songs.
On Metallica's *Load* they have a country
song. It's not a good country song, but it
very much feels like a country song--on
a Metallica album! So,
that's not to say that non-country
artists can't make country songs
because there's a history of that.
Do you not think it's a parody, though, of
country? One way you could argue is
that some country songs by country
artists seem to be parodies of country
tropes; so, that doesn't
necessarily preclude it. But I feel like
it very much feels like a parody by
someone who's outside of the
country world commenting on country
tropes by you know using them but
sort of messing with them in various sorts of ways. I don't know. What do you think?
[John] Yeah. Okay, that's awesome.
Yeah, you're right. You can think of a
song like "Okie from Muskogee," which
Merle Haggard wrote because he
was sick of all these Hillbillies at
his show and he wrote this song to make
fun of it and they're like, "Oh! We love
this song! Yes! I'm an Okie from Muskogee!"
Even though it's written
with irony it gets taken up like totally genuinely.
[Brandon] Maybe that's what happened here.
He's bragging about
"I'm about to change country music"
by sort of mocking it or
at least parodying it gently, if not outright
mockery. But you know maybe I
got taken up -- . I mean, the fact that Billy
Ray Cyrus... he's gonna hop on
anything that's hot, right?
Because he's a fame whore....
[John] Yeah.
[Brandon] That's my take on Billy Ray Cyrus.
So, the fact that he jumped on board doesn't
add evidence in favor of it being country to me.
But, I don't know, it really does feel like a
parody song to me, and maybe people
are like, "Yeah, this is me!
This is my life. I get this," and so it's sort of
like a Merle Haggard thing all over again.
[John] Yeah. So, let's see...
There still is the comment in that
video he says like "I see this as more on
the country side than the hip-hop side."
So, I think he seems to be genuine. But,
I think, what speaks even more to its
status as a country song is I think it's
a really important country song.
It plays this really important role in the genre, and it's
gonna play this important role in the genre.
So, I mean, think about this, to the fact that he didn't
come up country. I think that's what
makes this an important song is that it
took an outsider to make this kind
of thing. I don't think anyone in
Nashville who had a recording contract
was ever gonna make something like this.
[Brandon] Yeah, that's right!
[John] Even though they were
sort of veering in -- . And so, I think it's gonna
play this really important role.
A couple things I want to say
about that. One is since that came out--I
can't believe it's only a year ago--
country music sounds totally different.
So, Sam Hunt's album *Southside*, which we've talked
about [in a previous conversation], which I love,
is at once a very progressive and traditional 
country album. In an interview with the Times, Sam
Hunt said something like, "I was so mad
when 'Old Town Road' came out because
that's where I wanted to go," and like "Old
Town Road" pushed him to go to that place.
So, I think country artists are
taking it really seriously. And
you had Blanco Brown with "The Git Up,"
which is also a very hip-hop inflected
country song. And Blanco Brown: country
songwriter. You've got...
Breland, who's also this up-and-coming
songwriter, who also did not come up--
like Lil Nas X, based in Atlanta--
but was quickly accepted by
Nashville after he's writing songs.
He started with this track "My Truck"
that's heavily hip-hop inflected. And so
I think there's like definitely a
narrative there--a narrative that's gonna be even more
clear in, say, five years that we're
gonna see this as a really important
trajectory in country music. I was just
listening to this new guy Clint Johnson,
who used to go by Rashad--just amazing
country covers of of hip-hop tracks,
and they sound country but also
hip-hop. So, I think just one--I'm talking
too long--but just one other thing.
Think about the Nashville sound.
When producers like Chet Atkins said,
"Let's bring in strings. Let's make it
sound sort of like 'gentrified country' or
like 'uptown country,'" everyone said, "This
is not country music because it
doesn't have these markers." In retrospect,
though, what would we call Patsy Cline?
You wouldn't say Patsy Cline isn't
country. What else would we call the Nashville sound, or
"countrypolitan," other than country? So, I think in
retrospect it's gonna become
clear that this is a really important
catalyst for country music.
[Brandon] Does it matter that Chet Atkins is coming
from within the country community, whereas Lil
Nas X is coming from outside of the
country community? Does that matter at all?
I'm honestly not sure.
I don't think it automatically matters.
But does it matter that
Chet Atkins is within the
community trying to make progress within
it, whereas Lil Nas X is coming
from the outside saying, "I'm gonna change
this community"? There's an argument to be made that
country does need to change, that
it can't just sort of spin its
wheels forever. I have no idea,
but maybe sales are declining, the
market's changing, and so forth; so, in
order for it to survive as a genre it
needs to change, perhaps in the
way that "Old Town Road" is
is pushing it. I don't know. Do you take
the fact that he's an outsider
who's you know basically an
Atlanta trap artist making
hip-hop tracks, who's now made something
that sounds very much like a
trap song that just has sort of a country twang to it?
[John] Yeah, totally. On that last point, I just want to say
trap is infecting every genre.
[Brandon] Oh, absolutely.
[John] In the past like--what?--seven years
now, we've got trap beats in R&B and
increasingly in pop;
so, there is just that general
infusion of trap. I think the next
thing is Soundcloud rap is just
starting to infuse. But, okay.
I think you're totally right--I think it
does make a difference that Lil Nas
X is an outsider. Especially in the
case of country music, where I don't
think there's any other genre that's
so intimately tied to a place as country
music is tied to Nashville, which is
a really interesting feature about
country music, and also that's tied to it's ironic
institutionalization, despite the fact
that it portrays itself as this
genuine, real American frontier art--it's very
institutionalized. So, I think that is a
consideration. However, I think the fact that it's received
such uptake from progressive country
music artists just speaks to the fact
that it is on the verge of something new.
I mean, so there's one
important difference with Chet Atkins, which is that
someone asked him one time, "What's the
sound of country music?" and he jiggled
the change in his pocket. He said that... sorry, "What's the Nashville sound?" and
he jiggled coins in his pockets,
and he said, "That's the Nashville sound."
So, it's the sound of money.
Really what they're going
for it's more radio play.
Country music has always evolved--ever
since the '40s, '30s, has always evolved
to try to get more radio play
and appeal to more audiences. I think
it's doing that again. But one thing that
I think this is going to be a catalyst
for is like a progressing the genre
beyond what it looks like. 
Whereas I think now we would say the
Nashville sound was kind of retrograde.
It does not sound cool. It was not
progressive the way you'll say like neo-
traditional country, like George Strait
was in the '80s. So, yeah. I think
you're right, the outsider thing does
matter. But I think the fact that it's
received such uptake from people like
Sam Hunt speaks to the fact that
it's moving the genre forward.
[Brandon] So, one point you made is that it had
to be an outsider basically to sort of push
country in a new direction, that this
wasn't really going to happen from
within because of how institutionalized
and how sort of conservative--in
terms of maybe not politically
conservative but economically
conservative in terms of "This is our product. We're
gonna keep the product this way. We're
gonna keep pushing it out, and
so long as people are still buying
it we don't need to change much."
So, maybe the Nashville folks had a vested
interest in keeping country the way
it is, whereas maybe people on
sort of the margins of that within the
country community were less taken
with that. And then here comes this guy
out of left field entirely that
produces this song that now they can
glom on to this, that "Oh! This is
the direction we can go." But that
doesn't necessarily mean that "Old
Town Road" is a country song. In
the same way that Iggy and the
Stooges come along, the MC5 come along
out of Detroit. They're making this
super loud, super aggressive music.
It's not punk. But anyone in the
early punk scene was influenced
by this. So, they're like the
godfathers of punk, without themselves
being punk. So, maybe Lil Nas
X sort of fits the Iggy and the
Stooges and MC5 mold, where he's
sort of a godfather of a new offshoot of
country without himself having produced
a country song. Now, I don't think
that's a slam-dunk argument. But I think
it's one way to think of it.
Because, again, sonically it does not
sound to me like country music. So,
maybe it's just so far ahead of its time
that, no, it just doesn't count right now.
But maybe in 5-10 years time, country
music just sounds like "Old Town
Road." But, again, that doesn't
necessarily mean that, as of today,
or as of its release a year plus ago,
it was a country song.
[John] Yeah, okay. I really like that argument; I really
like that. So, a couple things. One I
just still, I guess -- . One thing I
didn't emphasize before but I do want to
emphasize is that to me it does sound like a
country song. I mentioned that he intended it as
a country song. It also first appeared on
the Billboard Hot Country. So, at
least there's some initial recognition.
Also, when you look at all those early
TikToks--because it went super big on
TikTok before anything else happened to
the song--everyone's wearing a cowboy hat
and doing some kind of like lasso kind of thing. So,
I think maybe we just hear the song
differently. To me it does -- and we
could talk about the tropes I
mentioned before. But to me there are
markers of it that do at least
heavily suggest it's a country song. As
to... could it influence
country music without itself being
country, which I really like that view.
I guess I'm too much of an Noël
Carroll student. So, Noël has this
narrative view of art where something
counts as an artwork if you can fit it
in this narrative arc, narrative story
you tell about art. And I think the same
is true for genres. So, I think something
counts as an instance of a genre if you
can fit it in, let's say, the right or a
sufficiently plausible narrative about
what the genre is--about the
genre. And I think there's no doubt that
"Old Town Road" is going to play
a really pivotal role there. So,
there's a view about what makes
something count as an instance of a genre.
[Brandon] Okay. But T.I. influences trap music. He
sort of brings it into existence by
being influenced by New Orleans
bounce and so forth. Is T.I.
a country artist, then? If
trap is clearly infused in "Old
Town Road," and if that sound
and that way of doing music becomes a
marker of country, is now T.I. a country
artist because he fits into this
narrative now? And does that mean that
Big Freedia and New Orleans bounce
artists are now [country]? How far does this go?
This seems a bit nebulous.
[John] Okay, let me tighten it up a bit.
You're right. I left it wide open. What
I should have said is that it fits
into a narrative placement if it's both
influenced by the genre and it
influences the genre. And I think
"Old Town Road" is clearly influenced by
country music in the ways I talk about:
the vocal inflection, the banjos, and the
kind of melody melodic structure
But the interesting thing is that
it does so much with that it sort
of blows it out into left field. And
it's also like -- there's stuff there
that's happening. You can look at
Sam Hunt tracks or Florida Georgia Line
tracks from earlier in the 2010s
that are pushing --  it's not
completely out of left field
either. So, I mean, did Lil Nas X even
listen to Sam Hunt? I don't know. But I
think there was something in the
air there. Anyways, the main
point is I think it was also influenced
by country music. So, whereas Big Freedia
wasn't influenced by country music. 
[Brandon] Yeah, yeah.
[John] There has to be a sort of --
It has to go both ways, I guess.
[Brandon] Okay. Cool. I guess we should wrap this up
because we've been talking for about 30
minutes now. But this was super fun. I
don't know if I'm totally convinced, but
I'm leaning more toward your position as
a result of this, and I think largely because you
listen to way more country music
than I do; so, you're more of an
expert on what country sounds like and
what it has sounded like leading up to "Old
Town Road" dropping in 2019. So, John, thank you so much for enlightening me on this subject.
[John] Well, I'm glad I could at least make you more
open to the possibility of "Old Town
Road" as a country song.
And this was so fun!
[Brandon] This was amazing.
Thanks so much! Take care. 
[John] Thank you.
