Oliver Anthony Goes Viral With Populist Anthem “Rich Men North Of Richmond”
“Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground, ’cause all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.”
Oliver Anthony is a regular guy who lives on a piece of land in Virginia with his dogs and writes songs in his spare time.
This weekend he uploaded a new song called ‘Rich Men North Of Richmond’ which struck an immediate chord with people all over the country and went viral overnight.
FOX News reports:
Blue-collar political anthem ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ takes internet by storm
A new blue-collar political anthem is taking the Internet by storm just days after hitting the web.
Virginia native Oliver Anthony’s song, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” is a twangy, soulful bluegrass song detailing the frustration of a blue-collar man fed up with the leadership in Washington.
The song torches high taxes and lawmakers for turning their attention away from the working men and women of America to “minors on an island somewhere” — an apparent reference to the offshore retreat where the late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hosted some influential persons.
“Rich Men North of Richmond” also contrasts starving “people in the street” to “obese” Americans “milking welfare” and the epidemic of suicides in young men.
“Well God, if you’re 5 foot 3 and you’re 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds,” Anthony sings. “Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground, ’cause all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.”
Listen to the song below. This was uploaded to YouTube three days ago and already has over three million views.
The song hit number 1 on iTunes.
Rich Men North of Richmond #1 on iTunes.@aintgottadollar has 3 songs in the top 30
a lot of people are very frustrated with what’s happened to traditional America pic.twitter.com/82FvWyGA3n
— Real Developments (@pdubdev) August 12, 2023
He is already getting offers from people who want to produce a record for him.
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: After offering to cover the cost to produce Oliver Anthony’s album, legendary country producer @johnrich has agreed to PRODUCE THAT RECORD!! @dbongino offers to assist with distribution. Holy s**t!!!! 🤯
Oliver Anthony, email me back!! https://t.co/mzGzwLy1n6
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) August 10, 2023
Oliver seems a little overwhelmed by the response.
Rich Men North of Richmond has been uploaded to all major streaming platforms and will show up there in a few days.
Im still in a state of shock at the outpouring of love I've seen in the comments, messages and emails. I'm working to respond to everyone as quickly as possible. pic.twitter.com/iScaYp9AWQ
— Oliver Anthony (@AintGottaDollar) August 11, 2023
And he already has a show lined up for Sunday in North Carolina.
August 13th
Morris Farm Market
Currituck NC
Free Admission
Food and drinks available
1:30pm-2:30pm
Many more shows to follow. Don't stress it if it's a long drive for you. I'll be coming to your town soon. pic.twitter.com/Nz6ueTTMi4— Oliver Anthony (@AintGottaDollar) August 12, 2023
This is such a great story. Congratulations to Oliver for his well deserved success.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
You need to check out his other songs on you tube. He has a good sense of humor.
He had a good message and a good voice
He do have a great voice.
You can hear the blue grass influence, very reminiscent of Tyler Childers.
pretty dang good. I have a hard time loving it- I can’t embrace the victim mentality.
Would love to see this guy do one about “Going Galt”
The down vote is an upvote for victimhood. This is why I really grew to hate Springsteen. This notion that a hardworking man can’t get ahead is crap- there’s never been a better time to be alive because hard working men are few and far between and valued commodities. Go back to the late 70s and early 80s— general contractors taking any roof job they could to get by. Now blue-collar wages rival those of experienced engineers at late career levels.
Hate on the frauds in the political class all you like, but the victim card is a loser 10 out of 10 times you play it.
Victim mentality? The man sings of working overtime hours, poor pay, and inflation. I don’t see many of those proclaiming the gospel of victimhood actually working
Wrong message. Corruption keeps the poor man poor. Rich men make the poor man rich.
Musically it sounds to me like it sucks. There are so many talented modern singers that I like that there must be some performance divide that I don’t understand in what counts as musical across the population.
Nice slightly similar but better aimed, Randy Newman Louisiana 1927
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGs2iLoDUYE
The rich guys come in as probably corrupt but anyway unlikely to help
They’re Tryin’ To Wash Us Away
President Coolidge Came Down In A Railroad Train
With A Little Fat Man With A Note-Pad In His Hand
The President Say, “Little Fat Man Isn’t It A Shame What The River Has
Done
To This Poor Crackers Land”
Prior to early ’70s the rhetoric of rich men make poor men better off financially would be true. Since the decoupling of the gold/silver linkage to the dollar the explosion of the money supply has created massive asset bubbles. This along with the explosion in administrative State and the technocrats who staff it picking economic winners and losers via tax and regulatory policies.
Who benefits the most from increasing asset prices? Those who can borrow OPM to purchase them and ride the inflationary wave; IOW the upper middle class and higher on the economic ladder. The middle-class and lower class have been monkey hammered since then; real wages and real returns on savings have been in decline or negative for decades.
Who benefits from rise of administrative State? Those who can afford to invest in mandated plant/equipment who’s lack will dive their smaller competitors out of business, resulting in an uncompetitive, overly consolidated monopoly or near monopoly market. Aided of course by the lubricant of the political class large contributions, boondoggle junkets, places on the Board for the Congressman’s brother in law and so on.
We don’t live in the financial and economic world of free trade anymore much less the economic ideal of Hayek.
A ditch-digger with heavy equipment earns a lot more than a ditch-digger with a shovel.
The difference is capital. Somebody bought heavy equipment with capital.
Capital is extra money.
The ones with extra money are the rich.
Some rich guy figured out a way to make a ditch-digger more productive than he had been, to make himself richer.
But it also makes the ditch-digger richer.
The extra ditch-digger income is trickle-down.
Trickle-down is not dimes falling from the pockets of the rich but the return to wisely used capital.
When you tax the rich more, their living standard doesn’t change. Rather, their investment declines. The extra money goes first.
A tax on the rich is a tax on the earnings of ditch-diggers, not a tax on the life style of the rich.
Think of capital, extra money, as seed corn. Seed corn is extra corn that’s not eaten. It’s what gives you much more corn next year.
Taxing away the seed corn to distribute it as food is disastrous.
If somebody says, “At some point, you have enough money,” he doesn’t understand that money beyond enough money is the seed corn.
For the most part I agree. You left out a lot of very real world things in your example. Barriers to entry enacted by politicians/regulators at the behest of corporate lobbyists and donors to limit competition would be one.
Lets tax everyone the same rate with a flat tax on income/benefits/compensation/ROI. Treat everyone the same in relation to their tax burden. Everyone pays the same % regardless of amount or source of income.
It’s not left out, it’s under corruption.
Flat tax is nice but not easy because you have to say what is income. exactly.
Defining income is easy. Anything your employer gives to you +, passive income (say above $6K) +realized cap gains (short and long) +inheritance (above $1 Million). Don’t forget to add Social Security and Medicare taxes into the ‘flat tax’ and now we have one rate and one set of exemptions for all.
End the corporate tax and all its distortions and carve outs. End Estate tax, replaced with inheritance ‘tax’. End financial fiction of asset shifting to trusts for tax purposes, tax the beneficiaries at flat tax rates based on their % or control. End tax free status for every institution including churches (render unto Caesar wouldn’t be a new concept).
I’m a firm no on any inheritance tax. That money was already taxed to death, why allow it to be taxed again just because it goes to another family member? Nope, no way is that conservative (or Constitutional).
Look at a map and see which city full of refugees ch men is north of Richmond. He’s not singing about all rich men.
City full of rich men. Stupid ass spell check and lack of editing ability.
Aw, I LOVE this song, and I love his voice. But then, I love country, blue grass, rockabilly, and all the associated off-shoots (that didn’t go woke).
Anyone with a red beard can’t be all bad…
He’s bearable
The tune reminds me of an article in Town Hall today:
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/08/10/angry-young-men-are-going-to-disrupt-the-garbage-paradigm-n2626783
Lord, it’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin’ in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
‘Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
‘Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I hope he says no to the album offer and all that. It’s just the machine trying to get their mits in his pockets. Let his home recorded songs – which sound JUST FINE – remain his and he gets all the royalties from the online song sellers.
First thing that happens in an album? You get an arranger who brings in a bunch of studio musicians who change the sound all around … and it loses the earthy sound and feel of it. And it’ll change him – he’ll be asked to speak – get interviewed – he’ll say something that the media will pounce on and the cancel culture will hang him out to dry. For now, his music says it all and it’s just better that way. Let the songs mean what they mean to the people who listen to them. Don’t explain – don’t opine – just write and sing and be hisself.
Hmm, it brings to mind Sean Connery’s Goldfinger comment about the Beatles and earmuffs.
You know this song is already loved when a well known Scottish historian is quoting the song lyrics as if they were written two hundred years ago by a Scottish bard.
10/10
Richmond can go to hell too. But I get what he’s saying and I’m right here with him in the neighbor region of the state.
Oliver Anthony’s viral song “Rich Men North of Richmond” expresses the anger most middle and lower economic class Americans feel today as they struggle to survive in the “new world” that he speaks of. The millions of replays and positive comments on social media from all colors of people, all genders, and various political views make it clear that he is streaming the current spirit of the age, the growing rage in the Zeitgeist.
As for those few commenters who reject it because of its supposed message of “victimhood,” they are absolutely, totally wrong. It didn’t go viral because of “victimhood.” To not hear the rage in those words and not see it in his facial expressions and straightforward delivery is a serious mistake.
And NO, it’s not anti-capitalist at all. Yes, he’s angry at a specific group of those “rich men,” those who are north of Richmond (that would be the politicians, lobbyists, etc. in Washington, D.C.). Most Americans – rich and poor – are angry at those people (Democrats and Republicans) who spend a good portion of their time (on our dime) enriching themselves.
The song identifies some specifically vile features of the “new world” First, the economy — he’s been forced to sell his “old soul” for a bullshit wage, and the medium of exchange itself, the dollar, because of inflation, is now “shit.” He, like many others, is pissed that many of those “rich men” are pretending to be concerned about the abuse of “minors” on that island (Epstein’s) while ignoring other minors and the people on the street who have nothing to eat. He’s mad that we’re over-taxed and that some of the taxes we pay are used to keep people down by means of welfare payments. He’s not so angry at the 300-pound people on the dole who scarf down those fudge rounds; he’s angry at those manipulative politicians who concocted this system that strips people of their dignity and keeps them down. Perhaps the rotten part of the “new world” that enrages him the most is that those “rich men north of Richmond” want to know what you think and what you do. They want control and power over you. Total control.
And here’s the kicker, they think you’re so dumb you don’t know what they’re doing. But, and this is strongly emphasized, the narrator says you do know. And he’s right. We might be ordinary middle-and-lower income people, but we’re not dumb. We know we’re being screwed. And our rage is growing by the day.
The narrator in the song wishes he could wake up and find that this was just a bad dream and not real. But, as he very sadly says, it is.
If I were one of those “rich men north of Richmond” in Washington, D.C., the ones who are responsible for this despicable “new world” we are living in, I think I this song would make me very nervous. It might just be a harbinger of things to come. I might want to take a look at those books I kept from my history class at Harvard or Yale about the American and French Revolution. People will only take so much.