Photo Credit: Lil Nas X/Instagram; Billie Eilish/Instagram
Lil Nas X’ hit single Old Town Road spent so much time at Number One with Billy Ray Cyrus it’s hard to remember how long it’s been or a time when it wasn’t at Number One. Well the total has been 19 weeks and came to a not so abrupt stop by singer-songwriter Billie Eilish who just rose to the top spot. It really wasn’t that much of a surprise since she had been tailing Nas in the Number Two spot for the past 9 weeks. “Congratulations to billie eilish!!” Nas tweeted, followed up with Cyrus tweeting “Congratulations @billieeilish Well deserved. Your persistence paid off. Thanks everybody. It was a hell of a ride.”
The 19 weeks that Old Town Road spent at Number One took Mariah Carey’s crown for having the longest running Number One song in US history which is quite the accomplishment for a song popularized as an internet meme. Nas received a tweet of her literally passing a torch saying “Sending love & congrats to @LilNasX on breaking one of the longest running records in music history!” Nas sent Eiish a similar message after the announcement that she hit Number One saying “U deserve this.”
And while we’re discussing records, we’re not quite done yet. Eilish is the first 2000s born artist to have a Hot 100 hit. The song, Bad Guy also marks her first Number One hit. Coming from her Number One album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go, she joked that her rise in the charts had Nas “mad on the low” but thanked him just the same. There’s nothing wrong with a little nice-nasty. Just don’t make a habit out of it Eilish. Buther future wasn’t all this rosy. She spoke to V Magazine recently talking about the industry execs who not long ago wanted nothing to do with her.
“I remember the first time I had any sort of meeting with a label or management, I was 13. I think the only people that didn’t look at me like I was going to have a horrible career were the people that I ended up working with,” she shared with the publication. “Everyone was just like, ‘Oh, you’re 13, yikes, you’re going to be used,’ and this and that. And I am like, ‘Yo, y’all are the people that would use me in the situation you are talking about.’ So, I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.”
She added, “The only people who didn’t say that s–t were the people that I felt an energy and connection with. I am really, really lucky and grateful that I have had the experience that I had with my label and with my team and everyone, because I never had any issues with people trying to pull me in a different direction, one in which I would not want to be headed. I think that might just be because I have always been the kind of person that knows what the f–k I want, and if it’s not what I want, then I am not going to do it.”
She credits her toughness as a strong point of hers saying, “I think it’s my best quality and my worst quality, how strong-willed I am, because it has brought me here. It literally has created who I am because I was just like, ‘You know what? I am going to do this and that’s that,’ you know?” she explained. “But then it’s bad sometimes, too, because I shouldn’t do s–t and I do it anyways. So I don’t know.”
And to think, those who once turned their nose up at her are probably kicking themselves now.
