Tonight (13th) is the biggest country music night of the year as the CMA Awards airs this evening at 8:00PM EST on ABC. However, a few winners were announced earlier this morning during a special episode of Good Morning America. One of these winners caught us off guard as Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross names were mentioned. The two were credited in the producer portion for their work on Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road (Remix),” as this song won the “Musical Event of the Year” award. 

The track featured a section of banjo from “34 Ghosts IV,” a song taken from NIN’s 2008 album Ghosts I-IV. Lil Nas X and producer YoungKio grabbed the portion and used it for trap beats. Reznor recently spoke to Rolling Stone and discussed how they used “34 Ghosts IV” for “Old Town Road.” 

“The way it was presented to me originally is I got a call from my management saying, ‘We got a call from a panicked manager saying they had used the sample of something off Ghosts. They should have cleared it, but it didn’t get cleared. It’s picking up some steam on the viral Spotify charts. What do you think about that?’ And I said, ‘Look, I’m fine with it. I get how stuff goes. They’re not saying they didn’t sample it. Just work it out, but don’t be a roadblock to this.’ I hadn’t heard it yet. Then a few weeks later, I was like, ‘Holy shit.’”