Chosen One of the Day: Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus, time travelers

First things first, "Old Town Road" is one of the best songs of all time, let alone the year, or the decade. It's a song that crosses eras. That's important. And it’s the music video of the first remix to Lil Nas X’s debut track (featuring the man who to me will always be lamenting his achy-breaky heart, Billy Ray Cyrus) that kicks the song from already impossibly high gear into an even higher one. 

It opens with the title card from the bygone era of the ‘60s and ‘70s westerns, three men on horseback in hot pursuit of our musicians down a dusty road. A subtitle tells us it’s Old Town Road in 1889. That’s right: Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus fly down the road on horses, holding iconic cloth bags, imprinted with dollar signs. 

They’re in trouble. Not only from the law, but from the landowner who sees them trespassing behind his house. So when the dude comes around the corner with a gun, Lil Nas X sees a burrow and takes his chances. 

… Only to get sucked into a time hole like all the best TGIF-we-ran-out-of-ideas sitcom episodes and fall directly into Old Town Road in 2019. Now, an unfortunate consequence of escaping across time meant that Lil Nas X had naught but the clothes on his back and, uh, the horse he sort of, but didn’t, ride in on.

But our guy is a thinker! Next thing we know, he’s street racing for money so he can update his threads to something a little more sparkly and a little sleeker. That’s when he finds out: Not only did he make through time, so did his partner-in-crime. Billy Ray Cyrus rolls up in a red convertible and a hot pink cowboy suit to pick Lil Nas X up so they can go perform. They’re not going to let a little thing like leaping across a full century get in the way of their musical progress.

Honestly, the whole thing is an inspiration.