After Lil Nas X dropped his new music video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” the internet was quick to lash out on their opinions on the piece. Racking around 85 million views, Lil Nas’s music video begins in what we may believe to be the Garden of Eden. Lil Nas, who portrays each individual character in the piece, brings themes of homosexuality and the religious stigma that “queer people go to hell” to life with his newest song.
This stigma causes so much harm. It can lead to the continuation of closeting and living in a lie— it could even end in not living at all. Throughout the song, we see numerous written words that are in reference to Christianity in Latin and Greek origins. The message that Lil Nas is getting across with this music video is authentic to how he and many members of the LGBTQ+ community feel: generally outcasted through and through generations.
The video itself received lots of attention, either in the form of praise or backlash. Since the song itself includes gay and satanic themes, many were found offended by the piece. Lil Nas received the most backlash on Twitter.
Parents found themselves mad to know that an artist that children listen to has released music with satanic symbolism. On Twitter, Lil Nas responded that he “literally sings about lean and adultery in Old Town Road. You decided to let your child listen. Blame yourself.”
In 2019, Lil Nas publicly came out on Twitter, telling fans to “listen closely to c7osure,” a song that he then links in his post. “I thought I made it obvious,” Lil Nas mentions in the Twitter thread. The response Lil Nas received was of numerous reactions, which is not uncommon for one when they come out.
In a recent video with Genius, a channel and website that analyzes the meaning of lyrics, Lil Nas opens by saying that “it was the most real and the most vulnerable at times I have been on a song.” He speaks on the lyrics of the song and notably brings attention to the ‘lustful’ nature that it brings in a queer relationship.
He compares it to the way that the music industry talks about sex from a heterosexual perspective: we do not see a lot of this from a queer relationship’s perspective. In correlation to these lyrics, Lil Nas mentions that we need to “normalize having these lines in songs… that’s really important for representation in general.”
The nature of the song and music video itself flips what many consider to be the societal norm. Lil Nas flips the script entirely and creates the environment of “Montero,” where there is none of “hiding the parts of ourselves that we don’t want the world to see.” He breaks free from the norm and strays away from what others think of him.
Another tweet of Lil Nas’ says that the backlash does take a toll on him and that he uses humor a lot to cope with that. Regardless, publishing and promoting this song was a way of speaking out on many important issues. He impacts many (Black) queer individuals and speaks volumes by doing what many fear.