The sudden viral success of country singer Oliver Anthony is a rare feel-good story in the culture war. Or at least it was, until Rolling Stone decided to roll all over it with their craven woke filth.
In case you’ve missed it, Oliver Anthony was an unknown musician until his track ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ went viral this week on Twitter, having been boosted by prominent American conservatives who related to the song’s lyrics about government authoritarianism, excessive taxes, Epstein’s island, and obese people on welfare (“If you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds/ Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”).
From being a struggling strummer with a day job in a factory, Anthony now has 160,000 followers and counting, and an offer of a studio album to be produced by country star John Rich.
The song is in the great American tradition of self-reliance that, while not partisan, is inherently conservative. Furthermore, since the Left currently hold the levers of power, the targets of censorship and corruption can’t help but seem like threats to the Democrat regime.
But it is also just a great song. Musically it’s simple, just four chords in the key of G minor, by my calculations. (For guitar nerds, he is playing it with a capo at the fifth fret, and looking at the chord shapes, he must be tuned down a step, which is common on the kind of Resonator guitar he is playing… I include this because it is far more musical information than Rolling Stone managed to cover in their entire article. But we’ll get to that.)
The vocal is the most impressive part, with Anthony clearly able to hit the notes, but also convey the authenticity that comes from hard-won experience. When he sings “I’ve been selling my soul/ Working all day/ Overtime hours/ For bullsh*t, pay” we are in absolutely no doubt that that is indeed what he’s been doing.
With its minimalist accompaniment and raw emotion, the song is in that darker, cooler tradition of country that now sits alongside its more slick-sounding examples. This is Hank Williams, Townes Van Zandt, Blaze Foley, maybe even Will Oldham, more than it is Garth Brooks or Josh Turner. Or for that matter Jason Aldean, whose ‘Try That in a Small Town’ was great fun for its trolling of the libs, but musically belonged to the corporate side of country. ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’, on the other hand, is actually great art.
Rolling Stone do not care about any of this, of course. They only care about rectifying the political damage caused by an ordinary man speaking out, or in this case singing out, against the Regime.
They criticise Anthony’s “Reagan-era talking points” (as if that is what Anthony had in mind) with the effete tone only the media elite can muster. They also seem vaguely offended by Anthony’s calling out of Epstein (“I wish politicians would look out for miners/ And not just minors on an island somewhere”). Perhaps Epstein is still a beloved figure for Democrats, as Rolling Stone refers rather ambiguously to Anthony’s scathing lyrics as a “real head-turner”.
And it is not mentioned in the piece, but no doubt the fact that Anthony turned to God to end his alcoholism, and a few weeks later was rewarded with this hit song, is not something Rolling Stone would be able to countenance.
They do point out Anthony has called himself “pretty dead centre down the aisle on politics”, and that “it seems like both sides serve the same master – and that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country”.
I’m sure that’s absolutely true, and that Anthony is not going to campaign for the Republicans any time soon.
But by being clearly opposed to whatever that thing is that’s immiserating the majority of us, call it the Regime, the Deep State, the Cathedral, the Blob, the Globalist agenda, etc., his song has resonated with American conservatives, who are now the outsiders in a country that seeks to put their leader in jail, while their enemy in the White House seems to flaunt the untouchable corruption of his decadent family.
And there is also something else going on here, something that has establishment ‘entertainment’ rags worried. It is that this loose conservative movement is finally acting upon Breitbart’s famous claim that “politics is downstream of culture”.
Major players are realising that they need to make, or at very least enthusiastically promote (Rolling Stone would say co-opt) art that seems to be directionally on their side.
Anthony can call himself a centrist, and that’s his business. Certainly it’s smart for musicians not to alienate either side, as Taylor Swift used to know until her perhaps inevitable capitulation. We have seen Bruce Springsteen castigate Trump in the most cringe-inducing terms, despite the men he sings about being the kind of people who would vote Trump any day of the week.
So no one needs Anthony to come out in favour of a particular party. However, it seems that country, one of the great American contributions to music, has stepped into the territory abandoned by the corporate sell-outs and is now giving a resolutely blue-collar ‘f*** you’ to the out of touch architects of Western decline and despair.
With Oliver Anthony, we have an authentic artist for our times. Telling is like it is, whoever that may upset, and – so fittingly for a lone travelling singer – speaking out for the plight of the individual against the oppressive apparatus of power.
And, yes, having a pop at fat people and peados while he’s at it.
Nick Dixon hosts the Weekly Sceptic podcast with Toby Young. You can follow him on Twitter/X and Substack.
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“Techno-con”. Neat phrase. I’m going to use that. It will take off.
Because Clown World logic dictates that the likes of a total non-expert ( and extremely bloody irritating, while I’m at it ) called Greta gets to have all the limelight and spout all the blatant lies but on her elitist platform she will remain, because she’s talking complete garbage but is pro-narrative.
And speaking of the Peta Pan of the Garbage Pail Kid world and bloody annoying people, does anybody have photo evidence of her or her eco nutter acolytes ever getting their hands dirty? Because if any of them ever did anything useful to help the environment, as opposed to gluing themselves to things, walking like zombies in the road or chucking orange stuff everywhere, I might be a tad less scathing. People should be judged by their actions, after all;
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1685046948833673216
Hello, Westminster….Mr Sunak…..Parliament…….Uncle Tom Cobley……
‘I can confidently say there is no real climate crisis and that climate change does not cause extreme weather events.’
Dr J. F. Clauser
‘Dr. John F. Clauser, born 1942, is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics. Clauser was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger, “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.
Oh!
‘In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.’
‘A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming’ The European Physical Journal +, Jan 2022
Off-topic due to there being no articles about jabs today:
This new peer-reviewed study is significant because it demonstrates increased mortality in children <5yrs the more vaccinations they have. Conclusion;
”There are statistically significant positive correlations between neonatal, infant, and under age five mortality rates of developed nations and the number of early childhood vaccine doses that are routinely given. When developed nations require two versus zero neonatal vaccine doses, or many versus fewer infant vaccine doses, our study suggests there may be unintended consequences that increase all-cause mortality. Further investigations of the hypotheses generated by this study are recommended to confirm that current vaccination schedules are achieving their intended objectives.”
https://www.cureus.com/articles/164423-neonatal-infant-and-under-age-five-vaccine-doses-routinely-given-in-developed-nations-and-their-association-with-mortality-rates#!/
Jikky has a good thread about it here with some additional information;
https://twitter.com/Jikkyleaks/status/1685468279077244930
Thanks for the information.
Neil Z. Miller, referred to in the links also has a very interesting book – “Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies”.
Well worth a read.
Of course Obama live by the ocean, (or should that be oceans?) despite his warnings of the sea rising
Cancelled by the IMF.. now there’s a surprise.. another nasty little cabal of bankers who are responsible for sucking the life blood out of so many third world countries with their unpayable debt, and plunging them into despicable levels of poverty..
Anybody who believes the IMF are the slightest bit interested in ‘saving’ the planet needs a size 10 boot five lace-holes up their jacksy..
LOL! What the hell does he know? Is he famous? Is he on the telly?
Well then…proof positive, the ‘science is settled’ according to the omniscient BBC…
we have our true, bona fide Commander in Chief Greta, who absolutely knows better and we need to be listening to her!
If Clauser is cancelled then all of science needs cancelling as well because a “climate crisis” is NOT supported by any science.—— In matters of science you question EVERYTHING. But the thing that is different about climate science is that there is no way to conduct experiments. There maybe agreement about some basic facts, such as the earth has warmed in the last 150 years, and that CO2 has contributed in some way to that. But there are also serious doubts and uncertainties. (1) How much can the climate expect to change as a result of us adding CO2 to the atmosphere and (2) Is this dangerous? There is also the question over the role of natural variability of the climate compared to assumed changes caused by CO2. But assumptions are NOT science. Speculations about the effect CO2 will have on temperature and climate should be discussed and debated, and when there is this determination to halt any discussion and silence those asking pertinent questions then we are no longer dealing with science. But many on this website will know that already. Science is all the time sold to the public on this issue as FACT. No it isn’t. It is a PROCESS. ———- Yesterday on GB News we had the usual little debate with invited guests. One of those guests in a discussion about ULEZ was the Meteorologist Jim Dale. I found it astonishing that he could still be harping on about the manufactured consensus, the so called 97% of scientists all apparently agree on something. But in this so called consensus, what were the scientists asked, and what were there replies? 97% consensus of scientists is ABSURD. As Judith Curry has pointed out Consensus is NOT a proxy for truth. Consensus stops questions from being asked and investigations taking place. Consensus is also just an appeal to authority, but science is not a dictatorship where people with views not consistent with the political consensus masquerading as scientific truth are outlawed, ostracised and silenced, and those who question dogma are delegitimised. Is this what science has become? Clauser is certainly finding that out, and so are everyone else who challenges climate tyranny.
If they cancel an opposing or different point-of-view it means they don’t have the data to defend their own viewpoint.
They know their opinion will not stand up to scrutiny.