Artigo Acesso aberto Revisado por pares

Can't nobody tell me nothin’: ‘Old Town Road’, resisting musical norms, and queer remix reproduction

2021; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s026114302100057x

ISSN

1474-0095

Autores

Mel Stanfill,

Tópico(s)

Copyright and Intellectual Property

Resumo

Abstract ‘Old Town Road’, a genre-defying song fuelled by proliferating remixes, is a key site to unravel the position of remixes in contemporary popular music and culture. In this article, I examine mainstream press discourse about ‘Old Town Road’, finding that Lil Nas X's use of remixes to boost the song's popularity was generally seen as smart, while the racial politics of genre were contested but still powerful. Ultimately, the popular conversation around the song showed a sense that one key possibility of remixes is to resist the ways that genres normatively operate as straight lines of descent from musical forebears, instead engaging in a queer kind of reproduction, a joyful excess of proliferating versions.

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