Lil Nas X has done it again. His latest single, ‘That’s What I Want,’ sits at #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100 this week, up a spot from last week. This is the fourth single from Lil Nas X’s 2021 album Montero, and the third to reach the top ten.
Both previous top ten singles (‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ and ‘Industry Baby’) reached the #1 spot, a feat this track could well match.
When Lil Nas X set a record by placing 2018’s ‘Old Town Road’ atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 19 consecutive weeks, many people (myself included) figured he was the very definition of a one-hit wonder.
A few years later, I’m happy to have been proven so wrong, as he has churned out one hit banger after another, all in advance of a debut album that doesn’t even have a release date yet.
A couple of weeks ago, I featured ‘MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name),’ the latest hit single by Lil Nas X. He has since released another track from his upcoming album that I hope enjoys as much success.
‘Sun Goes Down,’ framed as a conversation between Lil Nas X and his younger self, is a heartwarming (and heartbreaking) look at the pressures of teenage life, especially for a kid who is Black and gay.
I’m a couple of months late to the ‘MONTERO’ conversation. I never wrote about the Satan sneakers or the devil’s lapdance, or anything else about Lil Nas X’s second #1 single that got the religious right so flustered.
To paraphrase one YouTube commenter, it’s funny how homophobes told Lil Nas X he would burn in hell, and now they’re mad when he takes their advice.
Lil Nas X made Billboard history earlier this year when his unlikely country-rap mashup ‘Old Town Road’ became the longest-running #1 song in the history of the Hot 100.
He made history again a couple of weeks ago when he became the first openly gay artist to win a Country Music Award.
That’s a lot of history-making for a weird little two-minute track. And talk about a hard act to follow.
Meet Me In Montauk 