Music Video: Old Town Road CSP

Our first Music Video CSP is Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus - Old Town Road.

This is a culturally significant song and video that allows us to explore everything from narrative and genre to race representations and postmodernism.

Notes from AQA

AQA introduces this text as: "Old Town Road explores the relationship between genre and race, specifically in the country music industry but also, through the use of film genre conventions, the media more widely. The exclusion of Black artists from the US’s country billboard charts has been controversial and Old Town Road crystallises those concerns. Lil Nas X, known as a media influencer before his music career, came out as gay in 2019, which has also affected the way in which the music video has been understood.

"The music video reflects aspects of society and contemporary cultural issues in its discourse on race, gender and musical categorisation. An interesting area of discussion might be to what extent the music video as a form can transmit political messages. The economic context would include the ways in which artists make money from music videos, in this case the different iterations of video and song can be seen as a strategy to maximise the audience and profit."

Source: AQA Close Study Product booklet.

Introduction

Old Town Road is the debut single of American rapper Lil Nas X and was first released independently in December 2018. After gaining popularity on TikTok, it was re-released by Columbia Records in March 2019 followed by the music video ('Official Movie') in May 2019 featuring country legend Billy Ray Cyrus.

The song has been classified as 'country rap' - a hybrid genre not usually seen in the mainstream. The Billboard magazine country chart disqualified in on the grounds it was not country, sparking debate about genre-bending records. The song eventually peaked at number 1 in the US charts and is one of the highest selling songs of all time. 

Social and cultural contexts: Yeehaw movement

Lil Nas X and Old Town Road are seen as a significant moment in the Yeehaw Agenda. This is a social movement started by online pop culture archivist Bri Malandro. She created an Instagram account to celebrate black cowboy aesthetics in popular culture and reclaim black identity in a notoriously white genre. 

The movement is an attempt to highlight how the black cowboy has been erased from American culture. Despite the fact around 25% of cowboys were black in the 1800s, media representations depict cowboys as almost exclusively white. 

Lil Nas X: Old Town Road Official Movie

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road: Blog tasks

Background and cultural contexts

Read this Vox feature and podcast transcript on Lil Nas X and Old Town Road. Make sure you read the whole thing - including the podcast transcript - then answer the following questions: 

1) What is the big debate regarding Old Town Road and genre?

2) What do you learn about the background of Lil Nas X and Old Town Road from the podcast transcript?

3) What is the Yeehaw agenda?

4) How did the story become a debate about race in America?

5) How does Charlie Harding sum up the whole thing in the final part of the podcast transcript?


Now read this Salon feature on Lil Nas X and LGBTQ+ identity. Answer the following questions:

1) How did Lil Nas X announce his sexuality on social media?

2) Why does the article describe Old Town Road as 'genre-blurring'? 

3) How has country music demonstrated the social change taking place in American culture and society? 

Old Town Road textual analysis

Watch the video again and answer the following questions. Use your notes from our in-class analysis to help you:

1) How is the narrative features used in the music video? Apply narrative theory here.

2) What examples of genre conventions and intertextuality can you find in the video?

3) How are technical codes used to create meanings in the video? Analyse camerawork, editing and mise-en-scene and make specific reference to moments in the video.

4) How are representations of race and ethnicity constructed in the video?

5) What other representations can you find in the video? You may wish to comment on gender, sexuality or America/American culture. 

A/A* extension tasks

Read this W magazine feature on how the social media world (including Miley Cyrus) reacted to the video. What does this suggest about how digital media is impacting on traditional media products like songs and music videos?