2021 Artist of the Year Lil Nas X Is the Star We’ve Been Waiting For
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The post 2021 Artist of the Year Lil Nas X Is the Star We’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on Consequence.
Our 2021 Annual Report continues with the announcement as Lil Nas X as our Artist of the Year. Stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2021 as it winds down.
In the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, two lovers (Timothée Chalamet’s Elio and Armie Hammer’s Oliver) dance around a pivotal question: “Is it better to speak or to die?” It’s a question that lingers in Elio’s head in particular as he grapples with his sexuality, his acceptance of his blossoming affair with Oliver, and eventual heartbreak.
Though Lil Nas X has said his song “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” is more personal than directly linked to the Academy Award-winning film or book of the same name, the connection to a queer coming of age love story isn’t incidental.
The difference is that where the film is all muted tones and lush landscapes, Lil Nas X’s chart-topper “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” is overt grandeur. The accompanying music video is undeniably bold. It signaled Lil Nas X’s arrival not as a plucky kid in a cowboy hat, but as a full-fledged artist in his own right. Is it better to speak or to die? He chose to speak — and he spoke loudly.
There wasn’t another artist in 2021 who dominated headlines, charts, and streams the way Lil Nas X did, all while delivering thought-provoking art pieces and promises of more to come. A star was born a few years ago, and now he’s arrived, more of a burning comet. Consequence is thrilled to name Lil Nas X our 2021 Artist of the Year.
Lil Nas X has been defying expectations since he burst onto the scene with the viral “Old Town Road.” The Georgia boy was siloed from country radio on the grounds of being “too hip-hop,” despite the fact that present-day bro country is overstuffed with white artists singing in the same style.
History already knows how the rest of the story went: Following a bump from Billy Ray Cyrus, the little song that could went No. 1, and the incredibly internet-savvy artist employed every meme and collaboration necessary to stay there. In the middle of his chart-topping reign, he decided to throw another surprise at listeners (particularly the pearl-clutchers who might not have wanted him on country radio) and came out as gay; Lil Nas X is now the first openly LGBTQ Black artist with a Country Music Association award.
5 Times Lil Nas X Was Already Iconic in 2021
When you’ve already broken the Internet a handful of times, there’s going to be tremendous pressure around your debut full-length album. A rapid ascent to fame can be lonely, and it is probably exhausting to have to constantly find new, witty ways to combat doubters — or worse, vitriolic artists in your own genre who choose to spew hate rather than learn about something unfamiliar.
Yet perhaps no other pop star as the ability to wield the discourse to their advantage better than Lil Nas X. Having released his 7 EP in 2019, Lil Nas X welcomed baby Montero in its full glory two years later, a powerful statement of an artist rising in spite of the haters.
At just 40 minutes in length, Montero is home to moments much more intimate than what may have been expected from the guy who sang “Old Town Road.” “Keep me warm, love me long, be my sunlight,” he says desperately on “THAT’S WHAT I WANT,” a track that sees him seeking the comfort of a stable partner. “I’m not wanting anything but your loving, your body, and a little bit of your brain,” he promises.
Then there’s the devastating “SUN GOES DOWN,” arguably the most personal and introspective track on an already very personal and introspective album. “These gay thoughts would always haunt me/ I prayed God would take it from me/ It’s hard for you when you’re fightin’/ And nobody knows it when you’re silent,” he admits.
With Montero, Lil Nas X ensured that he could not be written off as a clever kid with TikTok on his side. He released a collection that required him to bear his soul, and was recently rewarded with five more Grammy nominations, including the coveted Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year categories. There is power in things that are new; there is power in things that are exciting. Lil Nas X has found ways to embrace both with unapologetic vigor, and that frightens people who aren’t ready.
It’s true that most people in Lil Nas X’s generation are leaps and bounds more accepting than those that have preceded, casual and warmly line-blurring in conversations of sexuality and identity. Even so, it’s still difficult to wade through delicate, heavy, and extremely personal conversations on a public stage. One thing is clear, though: Lil Nas X is the kind of star many people have been waiting for.
At just 22 years old, Lil Nas X doesn’t seem interested in boxing himself in. He also, curiously, doesn’t seem concerned with the idea of being called revolutionary or groundbreaking. Ironically, as the idea of “normalizing” has become overly-ingrained into the social vernacular as of late, it’s something Lil Nas X appears to be gravitating towards. He wants more blatantly queer romances. He wants people to not bat an eye at the kinds of stories he’s spent his admittedly young career presenting.
If there’s anything Lil Nas X does especially well, it’s exist beyond binaries. He has allowed himself room to be glamorous and traditionally masculine in equal measure; he’ll drop a poetic track before pivoting to a stadium-ready anthem. He turned heads at the Met Gala and then days later nodded to his roots in the American South with a cover of “Jolene” — one that earned him Dolly Parton’s thumbs-up, at that.
Under the confident Extremely Online persona that has allowed him to roll with the punches is still a young man who gets bashful in interview settings and is immensely thoughtful when it comes to questions of his art. Lil Nas X allows himself to be all the things — how many of us can say the same?
Montero, for example, retains a deceptive darkness even with album artwork that could’ve been torn from a Lisa Frank concept collection. For all its heavier moments, the LP ends on a hopeful note. In the closing lines of the last track, “Am I Dreaming” featuring labelmate and friend Miley Cyrus, Lil Nas X sings, “Tell the devil I can’t have him inside/ Tell the reaper he don’t want it, he don’t want it/ Oh, I know everything’s gonna be alright.”
2021 saw moments of light piercing through after an extended time of darkness, and one such beam of goodness was Lil Nas X. He isn’t pretending like everything was okay, but he refuses to let the sadness win.
Lil Nas X makes it seem like everything really is gonna be all right.
2021 Artist of the Year Lil Nas X Is the Star We’ve Been Waiting For
Mary Siroky
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