Bruce Springsteen Takes His Car to the Old Town Road
The Boss’s latest solo album, <em>Western Stars</em>, falls into the great tradition of using cowboy America less as a specific place and more as a cultural myth.
When the then-19-year-old rapper and meme-maker Lil Nas X scored a hit by sampling a banjo, pitching his voice parodically low, and singing about “wranglers on my booty,” some in the country establishment took it as an . But most of the nation, it appears, wanted to play dress-up too. “Old Town Road” has been the No. 1 song for 10 weeksrunning, spurred by a meme in which workaday suburban kids suddenly zap into flannels and 10-gallon hats. The year’s most surprising smash might seem like a distinctly internet-era phenomenon, but really, Lil Nas X is partaking in
