Lil Nas X’s viral smash hit, ‘Old Town Road’ has set the record for the longest time spent atop Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, at 17 straight weeks.

 

 

Last week, it tied 2017’s ‘Despacito’ remix by Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber as well as Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s 1997 song, ‘One Sweet Day’ at 16 weeks.

 

 

‘Old Town Road’ began it’s Billboard dominance in early April after the song got some buzz after Billboard, ironically, took it off it’s Country Chart, which stirred major backlash.

This was their initial statement and reasoning for removing the record:

 

Billboard offers category-specific charts simply as a tool for people in the music business to better gauge the success of songs relative to others in a given format. We are often times faced with difficult categorization choices.

Determining which chart a song lives on is an ongoing process that depends on a number of factors, most notably the song’s musical composition, but also how the song is marketed and promoted, the musical history of the artist, airplay the song receives and how the song is platformed on streaming services.

Billboard welcomes the excitement created by genre-blending tracks such as Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and will continue to monitor how it is marketed and how fans respond.

Our initial decision to remove “Old Town Road” from the Hot Country Songs chart could be revisited as these factors evolve.

 

Well, how did Lil Nas X respond? He added Billy Ray Cyrus to the remix and the song took off.

It should be noted, that some well established artists such as The Backstreet Boys, Nicki Minaj, Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, One Direction, Bob Dylan and Sheryl Crow have NEVER had a Billboard Hot 100 number one hit.

During it’s 17 week run (and counting), ‘Old Town Road’ has stopped some of today’s biggest artists from topping the Hot 100 chart.

Songs from Taylor Swift (‘ME!’ and ‘You Need to Calm Down’), Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber (‘I Don’t Care’)  Cardi B and Bruno Mars (‘Please Me’), Post Malone (‘Wow’), Billie Eilish (‘Bad Guy’) to name a few all peaked at the number two position.

 

 

The next question for Lil Nas X is how long can ‘Old Town Road’ keep that number one spot? My guess, is that it hits 25 weeks.

You heard it here first…

 

via GIPHY

Filed under: billboard, billy-ray-cyrus, boyz-ii-men, daddy-yankee, despacito, Justin Bieber, lil-nas-x, luis-fonsi, Mariah Carey, old-town-road