Lil Nas X dropped his new single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” along with its controversial music video on March 26. The song is a celebration of Lil Nas X’s sexuality, having his real name, Montero, front and centre.
I usually find that Lil Nas X’s rhymes almost border on goofy (“My life is a movie / Bull riding and boobies” from “Old Town Road”), but I was impressed by how solid his lyricism is in “Montero.” He sings about wanting a relationship to be public: “You live in the dark, boy, I cannot pretend / I’m not fazed, only here to sin / If Eve ain’t in your garden, you know that you can / Call me when you want, call me when you need.” To follow this up, Lil Nas X wrote a letter to his 14-year-old self on Twitter, saying “i know we promised never to be ‘that’ type of gay person, i know we promised to die with the secret, but this will open doors for many other queer people to simply exist.”
Now enough about the frivolous details surrounding the song itself and more about the transformative and mind-blowing music video. It heavily plays with the symbolism of Christianity, showing scenes from the Garden of Eden and from hell. Perhaps most controversially, at one point Lil Nas X is ascending to heaven only to grab onto a pole and descend into hell while pole dancing. What comes next is nothing short of an incredible cinematic experience: to quote a fan from Twitter, the scene following where Lil Nas X gives the devil a lapdance is my new religion.
This CGI music video is visually stunning and aesthetics-forward, yes, but it’s also detail-oriented, symbolic, and gutsy. Lil Nas X is being unapologetically queer in a groundbreaking way with “Montero,” defining himself not just as a rapper, but an artist in today’s music industry.
Montero Video Still. (Lil Nas X/YouTube)
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
