The most popular song in America features country artist Billy Ray Cryus and is about riding a horse, overcoming opposition and longing for home. Somehow that’s not enough to make it country. Billboard and so many others say that Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” is not a country song.
For nearly as long as country music has existed, critics have lampooned that today’s country isn’t really country. That’s not too shocking, as nostalgia overwhelms objectivity. University of New Hampshire Professor David Finkelhor dubbed the phenomenon of the current generation freaking out the next generation is weak or not what the last generation was as Juvenoia.