How Engagement Farming and a Dumb Meme Turned Everyone Into Country Artists

The culturally inarticulate used to like to say they listened to everything except country, but these days, they don’t have much of a choice. Pop stars as influential as Beyonce and Post Malone have (phenomenally successful) country albums, and new and unconventional artists like Dasha and Shaboozey made TikTok unusable this last summer if you weren’t willing to line dance, at least on the inside. Now, even Chappell Roan has a country song. Obviously, it whips.

Despite the number of words a variety of think pieces have devoted to the topic, nobody seems to be able to explain why this is happening. Industry consensus is that the idea of genre just isn’t that important to modern audiences, but less than a decade ago, interest in country music was sharply declining when every other genre was only getting more popular. It’s worth looking into, then, why people have traditionally claimed they don’t like country music. It usually has to do with an aversion to imagery of horses and cowboy boots, specifically among more politically progressive listeners, which speaks more to a distaste for the conservative values of the country music community than the music itself. After all, no one hates Dolly.

But there are very few pickup trucks in Beyonce songs, so that seems to explain that… except for two things. One, the country rap genre has been simmering quietly for more than a decade without ever successfully breaking through, reaching its peak in the early 2010s. Who among us can forget when Pitbull and Kesha yelled “Timber”? Everyone, apparently. Two, how the fuck do you explain “Old Town Road”? That song is nothing but horses and cowboy boots, and everyone loved it. It’s arguably where the trend began, even though it never should have been as successful as it was. Seriously. It’s only on your daylist because of engagement farming and a dumb meme.

If your first encounter with “Old Town Road” was some kind of normal music-listening avenue, count your blessings, because it only got there because of “the yeehaw challenge.” This was a TikTok trend that involved users filming themselves drinking a beverage labeled “yeehaw juice” and then suddenly appearing in full cowboy garb. TikTok challenges always have a theme song, and this one was “Old Town Road.” It was just a random song somebody found on SoundCloud… sort of. How it ended up on TikTok at all reveals just what an evil genius Lil Nas X is, way more than the whole “lapdance for Satan” thing.

Before he was an industry sensation, Lil Nas X was just a 19-year-old kid trying to go viral. He dabbled in everything, from comedy videos on Facebook to Twitter engagement farming. When he wrote “Old Town Road,” he essentially engineered it to go viral. He also labeled it -- somewhat improperly, some have argued -- as a country song instead of a hip-hop song specifically because there was less competition in that genre on the biggest independent music publishing platforms, meaning it was more likely that the song would actually be heard by somebody. Someone combing through the country songs looking for something suitable for the “yeehaw challenge,” maybe.

Now, as a result of a teenage rapper gaming the system, pop music’s leading weird girl is singing about how good she is at cunnilingus over the strains of fiddles rather than synths. Honestly, if this is the worst that comes of a random 19-year-old being really, really good at the internet, we’re living in the most blessed timeline.