LIL NAS X RELEASES MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)

“Dear 14-year-old Montero,

I wrote a song with our name in it. It’s about a guy I met last summer. I know we promised to never come out publicly, I know we promised to never 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. You see this is very scary for me, people will be angry, they will say I’m pushing an agenda. But the truth is, I am. The agenda to make people stay the fuck out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be. Sending you love from the future.

-LNX”

Lil Nas X has officially launched his most revealing musical offering to date with “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name).” The track was produced by Take a DayTrip, Omer Fedi and Roy Enzo and is an honest, vulnerable, yet confident telling of who Montero has become. The title is a homage to the award-winning film of the same name and begs the question: do you truly love your neighbor as yourself, enough to call them by your own name?

Based on a concept imagined by Lil Nas X himself, the accompanying video is packed with biblical references and nods to Greek mythology, while offering his own personal story of temptation, judgement, and standing in the full power of his sexuality.

The story opens in a lush Garden of Eden where Nas first introduces the theme of duality, which is displayed throughout the video. He plays the role of Adam as well as the snake that tempts him into giving in to the carnal desires he was forbidden to explore, and we see the two merge and become one. Following a nod to Plato’s Symposium displayed on the tree of life, a shackled up Nas finds himself at his execution day in the Colosseum, where he is surrounded by and receiving judgement from various versions of himself. Once he has been executed, he ascends to heaven only to be pulled down to hell where he harnesses his sexuality to seduce the devil and strip him of his power as an evil force—and dismantling the throne of judgement and punishment that has kept many of us from embracing our true selves out of fear.

The video was co-directed by LNX with Tanu Muino and produced by UnderWonder Content with visual effects by Mathematic.

Translations:

(Tree) “After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half.”