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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Cool. But the money and sheep are still here:
https://www.thefp.com/p/taylor-swift-unites-america?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNTQ3NDkyOCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTM1OTQzMzU4LCJpYXQiOjE2OTE4MzQ2OTIsImV4cCI6MTY5NDQyNjY5MiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTI2MDM0NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.TlbvddDzoWxFjghGbZdl4unjBQnQWpjf1obx2CZhKd8&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Nice song.
Typo – “So no one needs Anthony to come out in favour of a particular particular party.”
That’s particularly pernickety.
In fact it’s more than particularly pernickety, it’s particularly particularly pernickety.
I make no judgement, just pointing out a typo…
The choices were, complain about it, ignore it, update the article.
Thank you for playing.
Funny – I read that paragraph twice without noticing – and I speak as a dedicated pedant. Well observed!
Me too, and I was a proof-reader most of my professional life, with a similarly critical, some would say irritating eye. Some things simply escape you, and there’s no telling why, other than the fact that we usually scan rather than read. Sometimes it gets past a group of readers, such as the 19th century report of the Queen pissing over Westminster Bridge. Then again, there are the deliberate attempts to fool the editors, often practised by Kenny Everett, who was notorious for ‘going off script’ and finally warned that if he changed one word he would be taken off air. So here’s the exchange that got past them and was out there before they realised: “I want to join, but they won’t let me in”. “I’ll get you in, I’m a country member”. “OK, I’ll remember”.
How ironic that Rolling Stone took its name (in part) from a Bob Dylan protest song with lyrics in the same vein. I guess that like the Rolling Stones (band) it gradually became an Establishment rich kid.
Ad eventually knighted
…yes it’s often hard to watch the “mighty anarchists” of yesteryear who you have admired all your life turn into snivelling establishment shills…I still cringe when I think about Neil Young’s spat with Spotify, over Joe Rogan….and less said about ‘jab only’ participants at Foo Fighter gigs…..
This is the once great Eminem….LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wGb60nwiFk
I guess now we can stop looking for the guy we needed to unlock the prison cell and let Trump come out to be sworn in as POTUS.
Big kudos to Nick for gettin’ on his guitar geek!
My take from the RS article is that they really don’t know what to do with it: at one level they seem to recognise the aching need for decent, honest and skilful music with deeply meaningful lyrics, but on another level simply can’t deal with the fact that some of their pet ideologies are in the firing line. Wait until someone does a song about The Laptop From Hell…(blues riff, I reckon!)
On this theme for what it’s worth this song has kind of become my theme song since the covid nonsense started;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK0ZFpfn1cM
They and their audience are so ‘un-hip’ it great stuff, not only that they are called ‘The Whites’! it happens to be their name, 2 middle aged sisters and their Dad and I really like the pedal steel guitar player.
Like it
Nice. The audience is “horribly white”.
I’m very fond of this: Sweet Home Alabama / In The Practice Room #3 – YouTube
They seem to have 7 children…
I was prepared to dislike it, but, while it is rough and does not scan in places, it gave me bumps. More and more is needed.
The Rolling Stone publicity can only help him.
I think Five Times August is better:
https://youtu.be/oE3idi85jfQ
That was my first thought but hey, the more the better!
If we’re having a Sunday morning protest song vibe, James Roguski just forwarded this guy: some very slickly produced parodies. Groomin’ particularly disturbing
https://rumble.com/c/c-2244004
I hope you make money hand over fist, Mr Anthony. And I hope you keep sticking it to them and I hope you keep saying it how it is. Bring it on, brother.
I like the song. That said, we live in a time when humans in our part of the world have life just about as easy as it has even been possible to be. I sit in an airconditioned office moving buttons about for 36 hours a week, free coffee, heating, perfectly comfortable air, saving for old age, basically care free, etc etc.
I’m hardly working the fields for a pompous landowner, fending off barbarian attacks or making clay for 16 hours a day under a life debt.
I’d like to have had a family in a neighbourhood where all my friends and extended family could have afforded to live, surrounded by people I know and love. I think our quality of life has peaked sure, without fossil fuels and birth rates only propped up by invaders, it’s now on the down slope, but it wasn’t so bad. It’s just a shame, because it could be so much better.
Well put , I’ve said for a while that if you have lived in the Western World since WW2 you have exsisted in the BEST period of Human History since Man (&they,them,etc 😳)first drew breath !
Agree with all that, but “peados”? What happened to ‘paedos’? Lol.
Perhaps those with a predilection for Petit Pois?
Great article Nick, absolutely superb.
Brilliant song, great lyrics, and amazing passionate delivery. Good luck to him! He deserves it.
What is Rolling Stone and does it opinion matter to anyone with a brain to make their own assessment.
“Musically it’s simple, just four chords in the key of G minor, by my calculations,”
Not sure about ‘four chords in the key of G minor’ – he’s actually using the ubiquitous ‘lazy chord’ sequence’ which is I – V – vi – IV, with a ‘I’ chord in this case of B flat major. It’s the chord sequence used by every other pop song these days. See this, by Axis of Awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
The great advantage of this chord sequence is that melodies featuring very few note changes can be sung over the top of it – pefect for the vocally chalenged – which leaves less for Autotune to do.
I must get out more.
Thank you for this nice demonstration of They always watch but cannot see and they always listen but never hear.
I get my inside
From watch spider man
I’ve learnt a lot from Peter Parker
About dealing with the world.
Or from Youtube.
A virtual nickel offered to anyone who knows the song.
Another authentic artist for our times is the wonderful Five Times August.
Check him out on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed.
I will not be leaving quietly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NVnfM_H7TY
Add to the above
“Jason Aldean – Try That In A Small Town”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY
which apparently is racist, as it notes that were you an Antifa type, and tried what they did in Portland and elsewhere in a “small town”, you’d get short shrift.
So clearly racist…
Good for Mr. Anthony. I raise a glass to him, and use the regular toast that my wife an I use…
“**** ’em all”.
Ah, protest songs of old:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9tDZ5lriIIc&feature=share
The inimitable Mr. Lehrer.
My favourite is Blind Joe: –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqdXJIrMuLA
That’s a good song although it could do with less reverb in the vocals. The musical accompaniment is also really good, ie, simple but effective. The lyrics are a bit stereotypical, but Rich men north of Richmond is a great line. That’s the kind of street music I’d spent money on instead of just – as usual – contemplating whether it’s feasible to throw pound coins at them until they turn to flight.
Listening to the pod.
No recognition that Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States in the American Civil War and it’s the most Northerly secessionist town.
Anthony isn’t claiming to live there.