Switched on Pop - ICYMI: The Mystery of Montero AKA Lil Nas X (feat. Take A Daytrip)

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Lil Nas X has a talent for creating productive controversy. First with “Old Town Road,” he challenged expectations about blackness in country music. Now with “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” he takes aim at anti LGBTQ+ messages propagated by the religious dogma from his youth (he came out as gay during Pride 2019). The song describes a romantic encounter without innuendo. Sure it’s raunchy, but the song doesn’t especially stand out on Billboard where explicit sexual fantasy is commonplace. But his use of religious iconography in his video and merchandise created an immediate backlash. In the video to “Montero,” Lil Nas X rides a stripped pole into hades where he gives a lap dance to Satan (also played by Lil Nas X). Despite the obvious commentary on repressive orthodoxy, religious conservatives failed to see the subtext. The song became a lightning rod. But as pundits fought on social media about the song's meaning, most critics failed to look into the song’s musical references. Produced by Take A Daytrip, the duo behind Shek Wes’ “Mo Bamba” and Lil Nas X’s “Panini,” “Montero'' mashes up genres that take the listener on a global journey, sharing his message of acceptance across cultures. Music Lil Nas X — Montero, Old Town Road, Panini 24kGoldn, iann dior - Mood Dick Dale and his Del-Tones - Misirlou Tetos Demetriades - Misirlou Aris San Boom Pam Silsulim - Static & Ben El Shek Was — Mo Bamba Lehakat Tzliley Haud Bouzouki recording from xserra from FreeSound under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License More Listen to Gal Kadan’s project: Awesome Orientalists From Europa on Bandcamp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. A few weeks back, Lil Nas X puts out this song, Montero. Parentheses, call me by your name. That's right. And it stirs up all this controversy. Yeah, this is something I'm dimly aware of. I know that's maybe some of the imagery and the music video created outrage among. certain religious groups, but I don't really know much about this. Yeah, and at the time, I just didn't find any interesting musical insights to add to the conversation. But, oh, boy, was I wrong on first listen? But before we get into my findings, I think first you might want, if you're in your garden, you know that you can.

I think first you might want a quick refresher on Lil Nasex. Remember, he's particularly good at mashing up genres to make social commentary while simultaneously trolling the entire internet. We, of course, remember Old Town Road, which is a sort of tongue-in-cheek look at how blackness is accepted in country music. And now we have Montero. And Montero sort of works differently. This is a much more personal song, since Old Town. Road came out, Lil Nas X also came out. This was a big media moment and a big moment for him.

I caught it bad just a day. You hear me with a call to your place. Ain't been out in a while anyway. I was hoping I could catch you don't smiles in my face. Romantic talking your... And this song is really a self-acceptance, self-love song and one about his own personal sexual fantasies. I think a lot of people like me maybe wondered if Little

Lil Nas X could do another Old Town Road, could find something that so captures the cultural imagination. So do you know, like, how is this song doing on the charts? It's been on charts all over the world. Right now, it's, as we speak, at number two on Billboard, it's been at number one. So no sophomore slump here. It's known that Lil Nas X is good at mashing up different genres. He's also good at mashing up different kinds of texts, if you will. Here we have a reference to, of course, the film and novel by the same name, call me by your name. Yeah, this is a film that I have pretended to see for, I don't know, five years. I always nod when people mention, oh, yeah, yeah, come.

There's something about a peach, I know, involved in it. So, no, I have no idea what this film is about. Sorry. So this movie was a splash. It was nominated for an Academy Award, had a cultural moment for its depiction of a gay love story, and for its provocative sex scenes. And Lil Nasex is nodding to this title and its story. And in an act of extreme media mashup, I actually reached out to the author of the book,

Call Me By Your Name, Andre Asimam, who said over email that, it's always wonderful to be mentioned alongside other artists and see how they connect my work to theirs. It's no incidental thing to see the words, call me by your name, rise to the number one chart. What could be more uplifting to a writer? Whoa. I love that. That's so cool. I'm trying to think if there are other songs that have hit number one that reference literature in their titles. If you're listening to this and you have an example, please send it our way.

But otherwise, Charlie, don't let me derail you here. I just got really excited about that little quote you pulled. So, yeah. Lil Nas X's what I think I would call good at creating productive controversy. You had mentioned at the top of the episode that there had been a music video, right? There's this video that he puts out for this record where he goes down to hell. He gives a lap dance to Satan. He doesn't go down to hell.

He rides a stripper pole to the depths of Hades. Sorry, I just needed to amend that. But please continue. He gives Satan a lap dance. And as our colleague at Vulture, Craig Jenkins says, this lap dance to the devil in which he later snaps his neck symbolizes his own journey to break free from the shame bestowed upon many LGBTQ youth in Christian communities. Right?

Powerful. It's quite a visual. I mean, do we need to mention that he plays both himself and the devil in this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, especially that the song is called Montero, which is Lil Nas X's real name. Oh, I'm not sure that I knew that. Yeah, he is really putting his personal flag on this song. And the way he does it in the video ignites a whole controversy amongst the religious right,

which he goes on by releasing 666 pairs of Satan shoes that include actual human blood in the manufacturing of the kicks. Okay, so right, people freak out. And even the governor of South Dakota weighs in saying, we are in a fight for the soul of our nation in response to this song. Whoa. That's wild. But here's the thing is like, I think when I was first listening, I was like, this is all well and interesting. The visuals are powerful.

It's a great music video. It was a fun moment and like couldn't be happier that Lil Nas X is proving that once again he can not just make a hit, but he can make a moment. The thing is like I was wanting a musical moment, right? Not just a visual moment. That's the thing that gets me really excited. It's like why we do this show, right? Yeah, we're music nerds. Yeah.

And like with Old Town Road, you listen to that. And immediately you're just like, oh, this is, I see what you're doing here. Trent Reznor, banjo sample, mashup of country and trap music, weird formal structure where the chorus is at the very beginning and then you don't hear it again to the end. Yeah, there's a lot of things to nerd out on. Yeah, exactly. And like, and I feel like the statement that he's making is as much lyrical, visual, and musical. And as I said, when I first listened to the song, Montero call me by your name, I couldn't see how the predict. was in any way sort of mirroring that larger message. And over the last couple of days, I have gone down the

biggest rabbit hole realizing that, as I said, I was completely wrong. Were you straddling a stripper pole as you were entering that rabbit hole? I hadn't considered it. It's very small rabbit hole. I don't think it would, yeah, just the circumference wise, I don't think that would have worked. Okay, a rabbit size stripper pull. But go on. Is that image a little tiny bunny rabbit stripper? Do you need to purge that for a second? If Lil Nasak is teaching us anything, it's of acceptance. And so I will accept your metaphor.

Yes, all right. Keep going. Keep going. What are we missing about this song? What I was missing were all of these musical clues, and I want to play them back for you and see if we can piece together what's going on. So let me play you some things. I want to see what you're hearing. Okay. Okay. I'm getting. a perhaps flamenco vibe here or what

maybe what you would do what is the dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun what you hear it a bullfight perhaps is that it? Okay let's just break it down there's two major chords played on the guitar

they're a half step away from each other and clearly this is bringing up some associations for me but I guess I can't totally place it okay let's keep on moving let's see what else we hear okay it's like a little scavenger hunt here Okay, I'm going to use a kind of a technical term here that slaps. So sorry, I don't know if the people, you know, I'm listening might not be versed in music theory.

That refers to a groove that really makes you want to get down and move your ass. Okay, should I say something else about it? Probably. Yeah, what do you got? I'm into it. I mean, it's got, I like these funky handclaps. each bass drum is kind of like rolled into, like, and it's got that.

We're still hearing that, like, one chord moving up, half step and back down, which is kind of slinky and sexy, and I don't know, help me out. What am I hearing? Yeah, I think the clues here point to Lil Naus X, mashing up genres, as he's known to do, some Latin-inspired rhythms and handclaps, 808 style hip hop bass

but the cultural reference that I think has been overlooked is this lovely stringed instrument that pops up in the post chorus and outro What? Okay, that is it like a coto or something? I think the technical term is that was bananas. Yes, I prefer to try and avoid

using jargon, you know, on our show, Charlie, but I'll allow that here. Is that instrument a koto perhaps? No, it is definitely not a Japanese koto. I'll tell you the real instrument later, but you're not alone in misplacing this reference. Wow, this is fascinating. What have a lot of people had captured from this vibe

is, as you had put at the beginning, maybe like a flamenco sort of Spanish thing. So reporting from MTV and consequence have both said, yeah, this is like a flamenco thing. And I think these folks are wrong. Whoa. It just got heated in here. Here's the journey I go on from here.

Yeah. You always got to look at the liner notes. And I'll look at the liner notes. And I see this guy, Omar Fetty, is playing the guitar. Do you know Omer? I don't know Omer, but I think I'd like to. You have heard his music. Oh, okay.

How about this one? That is the smash hit mood by 24-carat Golden. and Ian Dior. On which he plays guitar, Homer Fetty. Huh. Omar Fetty is right. And that's a very, now that I listen to it closely, it's a really kind of unique guitar line with like these crazy bends or slide,

like portamento slides that he's doing or, I don't know, it's a unique sound. It's got a nice vibe. I mean, he is on an in-demand guitar player and producer, does stuff with Youngblood, Machine Gun Kelly with 24-carric Golden, and here with Lil Nas X as well. He is a 21-year-old working out of Los Angeles. He moved to L.A. when he was 16 from Israel. And he's been called by XXL, one of the best current hip-hop producers.

This is where I go deeper. Whoa. So Omer is the son of the novelist of Call Me By Your Name. No. Omer's dad, Asher Fetty, is a drummer who played with some of the biggest acts in Israel, artists like Sarit Hadad and Shatulamish. Shabbat. He's known for performing with Mizrahi musicians. Mizrahi musicians.

These are Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent. And all of a sudden I'm thinking like, maybe that stringed instrument that you're hearing at the end of the song and that opening guitar riff isn't so much a Flamenco influence, but perhaps it's more of a Middle Eastern influence. And so I had to go deeper. Whoa, the plot thickens. But to test this hypothesis, I had to talk to someone who knows this music way better than I do.

My name is Gal Kadan. I'm Israeli living in Berlin. So Gal is a DJ producer and music researcher who lectures on Israeli pop music and the interplay between European and Middle Eastern music. And Gal had a very similar feeling when I asked him about his first reaction to. this song. Oh, there's a Spanish guitar. It's this kind of this kind of Latin rhythm with a nice Spanish guitar. But then this moment, and call me by your name happens, that made him question his initial impression. There's this actually little bit that comes right at the end of the song, where the guitar goes down on the scale, where I kind of notice, oh, wait, this is more than that. And then he pulls up the song for me called Boompam by Ari San.

has almost that same scale and sound as Call Me By Your Name and sounded a lot like that outro guitar to gal. What was very unique about Arisan is not so much the way he sang, but the way he played the guitar, because he was listening to a lot of American music at the time with very dominant surf electric guitars. Ari San is this Greek guitarist who immigrates to Israel in the late 50s, where he fuses the sound of the Greek bazuki

with Dick Dale-style surf guitar. That's Mizorlu. Yes, famously played in the film Pulp Fiction, but the song actually goes way back. You can trace the roots of Mizalu to Egypt's Greek and Jewish music in the 1930s. Dick Dale was of Eastern European and Lebanese descent, and the harmony that he used in surf music drew from this heritage.

So Ari Sa, the guy we heard just before Dick Dale, he's inspired by surf guitarists like Dale, takes his Greek bazuki, plays that kind of thing on the guitar, brings it to Israel, inspires a whole new underground scene amongst Mizrahi Jews. Here's how Gaul explains it. Mizrahi Jews adopt Greek identities and play Greek music in fake Greek names and fake Greek accents

just because if they sang in Arabic, which could have been their mother tongue, it would never get any airplay. So if I follow, we have this surf guitar sound created by an American dictal of Lebanese and Eastern European origin. So which inspires this Greek musician to kind of electrify the bazuki, so to speak, and mine the surf style, which in turn becomes super popular among the Mizrahi community in Israel turning it into this musical phenomena. Yes, exactly. And... Yeah, exactly. Like, that is head spinning.

Part of the reason why this Greek surf bazuki style was popular is because it used, Middle Eastern scales that were common amongst Mizrahi Jews' cultural heritage, you can hear quarter-tone singing common in Arabic. Here's an example of a Mizrahi group called Sounds of the Ood. Yes. Yeah. But here's the thing is that this music wasn't accepted by state-sponsored media, which preferred more Western-sounding harmonies in its pop music. And so it stayed in the underground for much of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. They mostly sold the music on cassettes in the central bus station in Tel Aviv. It was called cassette music. In the 90s, when Israel started getting through privatization of media channel,

then this music really, really started breaking through. What Gal told me is that after the opening of the media, this music takes off in reality television competitions and on radio. And today, Mizrahi music has become a predominant form of pop. You can hear it on a track like Silulim by Static and Ben L. 2016. That kicks so much fun. I love that. And at this point, you're probably thinking, like, wait, what does this have to do

with Call Me By Your Name other than just like some guitar sound that Gall heard? And so I asked... Now that you mention it, you know, I wouldn't mind if you could bring us back to this track. I asked Gall exactly this question, and he thinks that Lil Nas X's talent for creating cultural hybrids is quite sympatico with the story of Mizrahi music. He mashes up a lot of different cultures together because for me, I think, that is the essence of Mizalchi music. The fact that Jews that came from Arab countries to Israel refuse to give up their heritage and culture and insisted on trying to infuse all the different

cultures together into some new style, and in that sense, I think it does evoke much of the Mizalhi mindset. I didn't think you could do it, but we got that. there. But here's the thing is like the guitarist on this song, Omar Fetty, grew up with music in his household of this descent, which is making it onto this track. I think there's sort of maybe even more important connection rather than some like history of Miznachian music is more like thinking about how the use of scales which are most commonly used in Middle Eastern music are so often employed to have. evoke otherness, you know, quote otherness in the Western imagination.

And calling by your name is using these same sounds, these scales that feel like they're in the Western imagination, if you will, evoking this sense of otherness, maybe a sense of evil, a sense of the devil, Satan. I could see that. All right, let's go into the real jargon, right? It's like both Ari San, Dick Dale, and Here Lil Nas X, all of them are using the same underlying scale. Right. Are you familiar with the family of Phrygian scales, and in this case, perhaps the Phrygian dominant scale?

I am familiar. I've been known to mess around with the Fragish scale now and then. Do you want to play it for you just in case you forgot it? I want you to play it for me because I love it. Shred, Chuck, shred. It's a great sound. I expressed some skepticism before, but I do see what you mean. Like this sound, this scale indexes as the other in both, I think, U.S. society and clearly in Israeli society.

So I can see how it could be marshaled within this song as this kind of subtle reinforcement of the lyrical message. Right. Especially the fact that this scale is actually globally. wildly popular. You hear it all throughout the Middle East, all throughout North Africa. It's in Spain. It's in flamenca music. And the influence of Arab culture into Spain likely brought this scale. It's even in Balkan music. Like, it's all over the world. And even though we sometimes hear this scale in metal and in trap music, it's still subordinate in Western pop music to the primary major and minor tonalities that are most.

common. I feel like we've gone pretty deep down the rabbit hole to prove out a perhaps ridiculous hypothesis of mine that the music is working on an even deeper layer than we had first assumed. But the only way for us to know what's really going on behind these musical choices is to talk to the actual producers that made Call Me By Your Name, which we're going to do right after the break. Euforia of Calvin Klein, the new collection Elixir, three new elixires perfumintention. Solar, Magnetic, BOL. Pulsan the banner,

do you quid, and discover your fragrance euphoria. Hey, what's up? I'm David. I'm Denzel. We are Take a Day Trip. We make some tunes. We play some keyboards, put down some drums,

just overall record makers. Just try to have fun doing it. They're being a little bit humble. David and Denzel, who make up Take a Day Trip, wrote Shaq West's Mobamba. Travis Scott and Kincuddi's. the Scots.

And have collaborated with Lil Nasex since Old Town Road. They actually made his follow-up hit Panini. Hey, Panini. Don't you be a me. He thought you wanted me to go. Why are you trying to keep me tinny. And our executive producing his entire first record, which is coming out relatively soon. Damn.

So I caught up with take a day trip just as they were leaving a session with Il Nazex. and I asked them about what inspired the song for Nas. Here's Denzel. He had come out last June, but then was like doing a bunch of promo and stuff and like, you know, going to different countries and doing shows and being really busy. And then just like everything stops. And I think, you know, around that time, because of everything stopping and him being able to go meet up with someone or like go on a date or something, probably for like the first time in his life, he was just able to be so much more honest and not really.

have to hide things and like metaphors about what things mean. And I think really like, that was one of the first times that he really was able to operate in life, not hiding like pieces of himself. It just instantly started translating into songs. One night, we were recording, one of the songs that Nas had made like in his house during quarantine that he recorded on his phone. And then in the middle of the take, he's like, just record this like separately. And then he's just like, Call me when you want. Call me when you need. Call me in the morning.

And it just says that like randomly. And doesn't have like all the words figured out to the end of that phrase. And then we're like, okay, cool. And then we go back to recording the other song. And then we're like, huh, maybe we should do something with that other thing you just did. And then Omer just like immediately just was like,

oh, like these chords can be cool over it. And then he records the guitar on his iPhone. And basically the entire song melodically was done just like in that. 20 minute period randomly while doing another song, which is like, Nause's favorite thing to do. Like, if you have to do something, it's like pressure to do something, we'll literally do the opposite for like 12 hours just to like not do it. But then sometimes it's like those offshoots end up becoming like, call me by your name. The song is in Frigian.

I think every song that we've had in the top 10, oddly, has been Frigian. Frigian mode is almost like a Middle Eastern. or Moorish or Spanish, like that entire region harmonically is very Phrygian-based. A lot of what you see of how that song made people react is that it's just tension is constantly building. You know, the core progression is constantly looping in just tension. Like nothing ever fully resolves. Right. It just goes up a minor second and then back down a minor second.

Up a minor second causes tension and then like kind of eases it by going back down that minor second. and then just like literally repeats for the entire song where it's like always pushing and pulling on on your emotions definitely wasn't like oh this is something to like definitely dance on the devil to but it was definitely like something that uh the entire song was building and releasing attention Nate you still hanging out there oh yeah I'm I'm hanging every word here all right here is Denzel talking about the Phrygian scale remember we played that earlier oh yeah how could I forget One of the cool things. One of the cool things about this scales is made up of all of these tritones.

The interval, also called the devil's interval. You have one here. You have one here. You have one here. Renaissance European composers heard the tritone. sound as so dissonant that it was labeled the devil in music and was to be avoided.

And even if it was placed here just based on intuition, it's another way that this song flips what was once outlawed and turns it into a celebration. And that's exactly how take a day trip approached this song. When this record was created, we're like,

oh, like, there's something about it where, like, it could feel like we're in like a drum circle, like, around a campfire and, like, all these kind of things were all, like, clapping and having fun together. And then we had got a banjo because it would be so funny to put like a banjo on this album

because of like Old Town Road and like Nass literally wants to do nothing country but it was like just funny to have a banjo. Dude, that stringed instrument that you could have quite identified that was referencing the sort of like Mizrahi guitar style.

That was a banjo played by Omar Fetty to not sound like a banjo. Usually you never hear a banjo. playing in Frigian or like any harmonic minor or like anything like that. But then when you do, it makes you think like not seeing someone play it, you would think that it's like a Ud or a sitar or something. But then it kind of like then starts to draw a line across like, oh, all these things are actually very much more connected, like a banjo, you know,

from the south or like a Oud from the Middle East. Like all these different instruments are not really that different. It's just like the way that people, their experiences change the way that they played them and now they're characterized in different ways. And how it's perceived is so interesting because it's like obviously there's a ton of layers but from like just straight musical standpoint

thinking of those layers, you know, only being from Israel and bringing in a lot of those melodies, the song is number one on Spotify and Israel and it's also number one in Saudi Arabia, which is like you know that it's not because of the lyrics. I mean, it's nuts. Like, this song is connecting across the world, even where LGBTQ people are subjugated by the state in a song with lyrics that are sexually explicit. And yet, the music has so many cultural reference points that it's breaking through with this message of acceptance, even where it's not accepted.

And so I asked to take a day trip if Lil Nas X knew that this song would have such a reach. He would say, like, this is going to be a moment. Like, you guys literally do not understand he had, you know, so much of the entire thing planned out in his head. And he'd let us know, too, he's like, you know, you guys are going to see me in a way that you've never seen me before. He knew from the start what this would stir. You know, this is a kid who was told from a very early age that one of the biggest sins is to be gay. And you will not be forgiven for that. And you will go to hell for that no matter what.

So he essentially just made a music video saying, well, if I'm going to be gay and I'm going to be open about my sexual. and be fully myself, that I'm going to shoot a music video and myself going to hell and living it up. I knew it would piss off a lot of people, a lot of people that aren't quick to realize the actual true message and what it's actually saying.

And how that relates to so many people that are afraid to be truly themselves because there's so many things in the world that tell someone who is gay or someone who is a person of color, you know, so many things that you can't be something or go someplace because of who you are. It's opening up a conversation for so many people that sometimes not all your beliefs might be

the best beliefs when we're simply talking about allowing everyone to love who they want to love. That's deep. I mean, hearing that really speaks to something I was saying up at the top of the episode that I think many people thought, oh, Lil Nas X, maybe that was just a fluke with Old Town Road. No, this is an artist who knows exactly what he's doing. Yeah. And could even tell, take a day trip in the studio, like, I have this, I have this, I have this, master plan to like really make this song land and and it's all based in his personal experience.

I mean, that's, it's pretty stunning. Absolutely. I mean, when I think about it, this is a song that, yeah, is about radical self-acceptance in the public eye that criticizes repressive orthodoxy, which is even musically making references to acceptance and shows Lil Nas X embracing sound. that evoke otherness in the Western imagination in the same way that he's owning his own sexuality. And maybe I missed all of those musical clues early on because they were so expertly deployed and subtle and just right that just makes you want to groove no matter where you're from.

And as for take a day trip, who produced the track, I'm excited to hear the rest of the record that they put together with Lil Nas X because not only do they know what they're doing, but they also make music with a larger mission in mind? We definitely create on feeling first, but if you ever come after us and say we're not legitimate producers, we will tell you the core progression. We will let you know how to make music. Yeah, we are two black kids that love hip-hop music, but that doesn't mean that we can't do things with intent behind it.

That's always been a big goal of ours is really changing the conversation around black producers in the pop space, especially for this generation. We really want to show the world that black kids can do this too. This episode of Switchdown Pop was produced by me Charlie Harding, Nate Sloan, and Joey Myers. This week we're edited by Bill Lance, social media by Abby Bard, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. Our executive producers are Hannah Rosen and Nashakurah, and we're a member with the Vox Media Podcast Network and Vulture. I want to say thank you to Udi Asa for connecting me with Galcadon, who has a great music project that goes deeper into the cultural dynamics of appropriation between East and West.

We'll link to it in our show notes and on our website, switched on pop.com. Also, I'll be posting my entire conversation with Take a Day Trip as a bonus piece in our feed, which you can find anywhere you get podcasts. Do you ask them about their infamous Twitter clapback with Zed back in 2018? We definitely do. Oh, okay, I got to hear that. I got to hear that.

It's really fun. And otherwise, we love hearing from you on the Twitter, on the Instagram. It's at Switched on Pop. Tell us what you're listening to. Tell us what we missed. And other than that, I think all that remains to say is that we will see you next week for the brand new episode. Where we will be speaking with Julia Michaels, a songwriter who we have been studying on our show for years.

She's got a new record out. It's going to be a really fun conversation. I started palpitating just when I hear you said that name. Until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.