Dear Gossips,

It’s official: Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” has set the record for the most weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts, surpassing Mimi’s “One Sweet Day” and “Despacito” by Luis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee. This is history – and it’s fitting. When I first posted about “Old Town Road” back in April, Billboard had pulled it from the country charts, bullsh-tting that it wasn’t country enough. It’s a song that defies genre, it’s a disruptor, and they couldn’t find a way to stick it in a neat little box; they couldn’t find a way to stick Lil Nas X in a neat little box. As I wrote then, "Old Town Road” is more than just a song, it is a challenge, yet another challenge (Beyoncé’s "Daddy Lessons" is "OTR"’s fairy godmother), to institutions and systems that have always done things A Certain Way and are now being confronted with a powerful change that they can’t ignore, change that will happen, if it has to, without them because, clearly, the change-makers are proving over and over again that even if the status quo tries to block them, they’ll find a way to go around it. 

And look what happened. The track just kept climbing and climbing. “Old Town Road” is like the Rudy of songs.

Mimi congratulated Lil Nas X on Twitter by posting a really flattering and skinny photo of herself (when is she ever not skinny though?) holding a torch:

She then went on to pay tribute to her own song and what it meant to people. Which is what we should do now. Let’s never take her presence for granted. 

 

Here's Mimi out in New York the other day. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey