The Virality of Lil Nas X
From being a TikTok star to holding the longest record on Billboard
Virality analysis of an article from the New York Magazine titled “Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ Was Destined to Disrupt” written by Dan Reilly.
Many Americans in 2019 were shocked to see Lil Nas X show up on the Billboard hot 100 after hearing his hit “Old Town Road” also blow up on the famous video app, TikTok.
According to Businessofapps.com, “TikTok jumped from 269th to 4th in global app download rank in February 2019.”
Going off of this, it becomes clear how Lil Nas X’s career took off in April of 2019. As it gained more traction in America so did the various music audios uploaded on the site as well.
Although TikTok and Twitter became his main social media platforms for going viral, another reason why he gained so much popularity around the world was through word of mouth.
“I'm gonna take my house to the old town rode.” Lil Nas X sings in “Old Town Road”.
This iconic line became known all over the world and was 2019’s biggest hit of the year which eventually led to its overpowering presence at the Grammy’s this year.
One thing that made Lil Nas X take off in the way that he did was his use of hip-hop/country rhythms and themes. The song features various styles of rapping with a country backing track that makes the song extremely unique.
Another way Lil Nas X has overrun the media scene in such a short time is by collaborating with big artists such as BTS to make a remix titled “Seoul Town Road” where one of the members of the group raps throughout the song in both English and Korean.
Up until this collaboration, Lil Nas X’s fame only came from his own fan base growing but after the collaboration, millions of people from all over the world started to listen to his music and stay up to date with his performances.
In the context of the four ways to identify and measure virality:
- Social aspects of sharing info: Involving the biggest boyband on the globe had a major impact because BTS’s fanbase, Army, was then able to reshare and stream the song which now has over 17 Million views.
- The speed of the spread: After its release on both Lil Nas X and BTS’s Twitter pages the hashtag #seoultownroad, as well as others, immediately took up Twitter’s trending page.
- Reach in the number of people excited about the context: It's clear that Lil Nas X chose very precisely about who he should collab with and smartly chose BTS, whose fanbase is well over 48 Million.
- The reach by bridging multiple networks: Although the original song is tailed towards an American audience, incorporating Korean into the song quite literally brings the song all the way across the world.
And as Lil Nas X said on his twitter last year, “hell yeah im a industry plant and what y’all gone do about it.”