Old Town Road

[Martin Hash]

Gwynne & Nico c.jpg

We tend my granddaughter, Nico, on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 4 hours until her mom gets off work. Nico is almost 2; one of her favorite things is those novelty animals that play songs when you push the button. She was over and had pulled all the animals off the shelf and was lining them up on the floor. Of course, she had to push the button on every one of them, so the cacophony in the house was deafening. For some reason I was tell my wife, Gwynne, a story that referenced the song, “Old Town Road,” a HipHop hit that crossed all the charts, written by Lil Nas X, and performed with Billy Ray Cyrus. She didn’t know what I was talking about, even though she listens to the country radio and it was huge a couple years ago. I sang what I could remember to her; nope. I got my phone out, pulled up the song and began playing it; still nope, she didn’t recognize anything.
“Wait for the Billy Ray chorus,” I assured her, knowing she’d recognize it then.
Nope. I was getting exasperated; how could my wife, someone I go dancing with 3 times a week, not know one of the biggest songs in decades? Right then, I heard “old Town Road” playing from the room where Nico had all the music going.
“That!” I exclaimed to Gwynne, feeling vindicated. “That’s Old Town Road. You had to have heard it when Nico pushed that button before.”
Gwynne admitted she must have heard the song at least dozens of times, if not hundreds. Just then, another version of “Old Town Road” on a different novelty toy began playing; two at the same time! I looked at Gwynne with my mouth open; the song was that famous. Gwynne was chagrined.
We went to dinner with some old friends that evening, and I thought the incident was a good story to tell. I started with the question to the husband: “Do you know the song, ‘Old Town Road?’” “No,” he said. His wife also said no. Again frustrated, I got my phone out and played it..
“Nope, never heard it,” my friend said. “But I like it; I’m going to play it for over 200 of my employees at a retreat this weekend.”
Hopefully some of them have heard “Old Town Road” before or a lot of people in this country are truly clueless with respect to music.