Montero (Call Me By Your Name)
is the new single by Lil Nas X (born in 1999 with the name of Montero Lamar Hill) and this is, soon enough, the chronology of the song.
In July 2020, he posted a video on Twitter in which he was seen driving while listening to an excerpt from the song.
The clip, only 38 seconds long and still posted on his channel, has more than 21 million views.
In the intermission of the last Super Bowl, the rapper starred in an ad for the technology firm Logitech in which his future single played in the background.
The NFL final is one of the biggest showcases in the world for any artist and although this year the event had the worst audience figures since 2007, it still touched 100 million viewers.
The song was released on March 26, on an album with a cover by Spanish Filip Custic, and has already reached number one in the UK and Ireland.
The video, a
kitsch
delusion
(in its three-minute duration, the artist falls from heaven to hell and ends up seducing the devil himself with his high-heeled boots), has been a success that has exceeded 100 million views.
About 10 million views every day on average.
On Spotify it has reached 95 million views.
All this has caused that the launch of
Montero (Call Me By Your Name)
has been described by some experts of Internet like exemplary.
The US edition of
Forbes
has referred to the entire operation as "a culture war that is paying off."
The cover of 'Montego (Call me by your name)' by Lil Nas X, by the Spanish Filip Custic.
"The key to the success of the Lil Nas X campaign lies in the combination of two concepts: the use of ironic humor so characteristic of Generation Z, to which he belongs, and the interaction with the community", considers the expert in social networks Janira Planes, author of the
Truffle Season
newsletter
on technology, memes and internet culture.
“His Twitter abounds with viral posts, ironically quoting conservative commentators and constructing tweets with
the platform's
memetic
logic
.
On YouTube he falsely apologizes, now that scandal apology videos are a genre in themselves, for having pulled off some satanic slippers.
It also publishes unofficial videos that feed the speech and provide new sounds with which to play and create content.
In TikTok he takes advantage of the content generated by the users with his song and publishes it on his profile ”.
But who is Lil Nas X?
Lil Nas X was born in 1999 in Atlanta (Georgia).
With British origins on the father's side and Dominican on the mother's side, he was christened Montero Lamar Hill in homage to the Mitshubishi Montero, the dream car his mother never owned.
The family did not have the financial resources to think of Japanese SUVs.
When Montero was six years old, his parents separated and he spent his childhood living between two homes.
At nine he moved permanently with his father to a town outside Atlanta called Austell, which a
Rolling Stone
reporter admitted years later
may have saved his life.
"There was so much going on in Atlanta that if I'd grown up there, I probably would have hung out with the wrong people," he said.
It was thanks to this boring and lonely suburban environment that he took refuge on the internet.
And he did it at a key moment, just when memes were beginning to be considered a form of entertainment in itself and, probably, in the minimum unit of communication between Generation Z. Montero plunged into that trend that, a few years later, would be your ticket to fame.
At the age of 16, Montero's dream was to gain a foothold on the internet as a content creator.
But he didn't know where to start.
At first, he would upload comic videos to Facebook or the now-defunct Vine, but soon realized that what he did best was Twitter.
Under the alias of "Nas" he began to accumulate followers by posting jokes about his height (he measures almost 190 centimeters) or ironic reflections on the low control of arms in the United States.
Rapper Lil Nas X, dressed in pink leather, at the Grammy Awards in January 2020.
In 2018 he left his studies with a new dream: to dedicate himself to music.
His parents did not accept the decision and he moved in with his sister.
He was convinced that the fame he had accumulated over the previous two years with his videos could help him gain attention in the world of music.
He got it right.
Old Town Road
is the
country rap
song
that marked his rise to stardom and that he created completely at home, without labels or publicists and with a 100% independent campaign, based on his knowledge of the medium.
How the success of this song came about is key to understanding what happened to
Montero (Call Me By Your Name)
.
Succeed out of boredom
Lil Nas X told
Rolling Stone
that he started making music "out of boredom" at the end of 2018. In total, he spent only 50 euros on the creation of
Old Time Road
: 30 on a basis that he bought online from a Dutch producer and another 20 to record the vocals in less than an hour taking advantage of the
20 dollar Tuesdays
("Tuesdays at 20 dollars") offer from an Atlanta recording studio called CinCoYo.
The goal was for the song to go viral both on Twitter and on the new social network that was beginning to be talked about in the Western world at the time: TikTok.
He knew that his main weapon was the memes he created for Twitter.
Lil Nas X is an extremely funny and acid character, something that always works.
On the other hand, when he was preparing the song, his followers were obsessed with the recently released video game
Red Dead Redemption 2
,
which takes place in the West.
"The plan was to use
Old Town Road
in as many memes as possible until it hits people," he told
Rolling Stone
.
According to him, he came to create about a hundred memes with the subject until he finally made the leap to TikTok and the thing got out of hand.
The users of this network turned
Old Town Road
into the song of the summer of 2019 and used it en masse in the
#Yeehaw challenge
, which consisted of uploading a video in which they transformed into a
cowboy
–or
cowgirl–
after one of the classic
jump cuts
from TikTok (the cuts in which, after a jump, a user appears with another outfit, all this magic of the home edition).
The result was massive success: its remix with the participation of
country
myth
Billy Ray Cyrus reached number on the US Billboard chart and was crowned the most successful song of the year in that country.
The current
Montero was
born from a different moment (Lil Nas X is already a celebrity), but deep down she has been based on the same promotional system: putting the internet to work for her benefit.
Especially his enemies.
A plan of attack with two main fronts
The lyrics of the new Lil Nas X song is a catalog of perversions and the video, directed by director Tanu Muino (author of the clip for
I swear that
Rosalía) and the artist himself, is a waste of color and digital image that ends up placing us at the epicenter of sin.
At first we see how the Atlanta man is tempted by a snake with a human face in the Garden of Eden, later he is tried in front of a court in front of which he ends up dying and descending into hell on a
stripper pole
, where he does a dance. sexy to the devil himself, whom he later ends up liquidating to declare himself the new King of Darkness.
In parallel to the launch of the video –in collaboration with the advertising agency / artistic collective MSCHF–, Lil Nas X put
Satan Shoes on
sale
, an edition of 666 customized pairs of Nike Air Max 97 with a gold pentagram hanging from the laces. and that they apparently carry a drop of human blood mixed with the red liquid that fills their soles.
The starting price of the sneakers is $ 1,018, due to a quote from the Bible, Luke 10:18.
Verse 18 of chapter 10 of the Gospel of Saint Luke that literally says: "He said to them: 'I was seeing Satan fall from heaven like lightning."
Nike has just stopped the commercialization of the sneakers, arguing that there is a
copyright infringement
of its original design.
Of course, the firm has sued the MSCHF collective, not Lil Nas X himself, a star too popular among young people to mess with her.
But this is nothing compared to what seemed to be the real goal of Lil Nas X: to have the American conservatives campaign for him for free.
The polarized political landscape of his country, the openly sexual and
queer
attitude
of the singer in the video and the shameless flirtation with Satanism that all the promotion exudes have had the same effect on the American religious right as pouring a liter of blood in a swimming pool full of piranhas.
And where have all these people gone to complain?
Indeed, to Twitter, the place where the author of
Montero
moves better.
You criticize me, I cover myself
In the network of the bird, Lil Nas X has put on the uniform of a tweeter and has spent several days responding sarcastically to all his critics while the popularity of his video increased.
He finished them off with one quick and humiliating response after another.
Kristi Noem, Republican Governor of South Dakota: "Are you a governor and come here to tweet about shoes?
Get on with your damn job! ”;
Protestant Pastor Greg Locke: “I'm Going To
Sample You
!”;
or the
right-wing
influencer
Candace Owens: "You know you've done something right when this woman starts talking about you" were some of the many critics to whom the rapper has responded quickly.
The song, the video and the shoes.
Everything has been a great bait for the prophets of the North American extreme right, who have taken a golden opportunity to use the controversy, respond with the immediacy of a native of the networks and, incidentally, get gold.
With more than 12 million followers on TikTok, this time Montero has not needed anyone to put hundreds of users to upload videos with his song.
On Wednesday, he himself launched the
#PoleDanceToHell
challenge on the Chinese network
, which already accumulates more than 18 million views.
It is still too early to know if the success of
Montero (Call Me By Your Name)
will match that of
Old Town Road
.
For now, it seems that its presence in lists can extend for months and become, again, one of the songs of the summer in the Anglo-Saxon countries.
Whatever happens to her, its launch has been a lesson in how to lead the conversation on the internet with something even more powerful than teen networks: the political battle between adults.
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