Oliver Anthony performs on the Oliver Anthony live performance on the Eagle Creek Golf Membership on August 19, 2023 in Moyock, North Carolina.
Mike Caudill/Billboard by way of Getty Photographs
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Mike Caudill/Billboard by way of Getty Photographs
Oliver Anthony performs on the Oliver Anthony live performance on the Eagle Creek Golf Membership on August 19, 2023 in Moyock, North Carolina.
Mike Caudill/Billboard by way of Getty Photographs
The track “Wealthy Males North of Richmond” — written and carried out by an artist practically nobody had heard of just some weeks in the past — was perched at No. 1 on the Billboard Sizzling 100. That was even earlier than its creator, who goes by Oliver Anthony, was positioned entrance and heart at Wednesday night time’s GOP debate. It was featured earlier than the candidates even spoke.
Anthony has already achieved a primary for any musician working in any style: he made the highest of the charts out of nowhere. He is by no means had a track on any chart, and “Wealthy Males North of Richmond” was launched simply over two weeks in the past.
“Wealthy Males North of Richmond” appears to suit right into a deep vein of protest music, decrying the fats cats who would benefit from the working man. At its floor, Anthony’s track echoes generations of singer-songwriterly custom. Lyrics celebrating the working man and girl have an extended historical past in American music, from artists together with Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Invoice Withers and Bruce Springsteen.
Scratch the floor, nonetheless, and also you additionally discover extremist and conspiratorial narratives.
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One line, specifically, stands out for its affiliation with a recognized conspiracy concept: “I want politicians would look out for miners / And never simply minors on an island someplace.” It is a reference to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal: Epstein died in jail 4 years in the past this month, however inside far-right circles, there proceed to be conspiracy theories in regards to the circumstances round his dying. Anthony additionally makes snide remarks about chubby people who seem to evoke Reagan-era tropes of welfare queens: “Nicely, God, if you happen to’re 5-foot-3 and also you’re 300 kilos,” he chastises, ” Taxes ought to not pay in your luggage of Fudge Rounds.”
Elsewhere, Anthony talks about human trafficking and other people benefiting from youngsters, which is a baseless however widespread QAnon narrative. On a more moderen track launched Wednesday referred to as “I Wish to Go Residence,” he warns that the U.S. is now on the point of a brand new world warfare. (NPR reached out repeatedly to Anthony for an interview however acquired no response.)
Jared Holt is a senior researcher on the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. He mentioned this is not new: political actions, together with extremist ones, have at all times understood the ability of cultural artifacts like music or motion pictures in normalizing their concepts.
Holt says the factor to notice right here is how the track has been seized on by some far-right influencers, together with individuals who have made a occupation of sowing discord within the U.S. with disinformation about issues like COVID-19 vaccines or LGBTQ folks.
“If these far-right figures are profitable in associating themselves instantly with this track,” Holt says, “it might doubtlessly open up a wider viewers that they could usually not have entry to.”
Anthony’s speedy rise has some very explicit context this summer time, nonetheless. Earlier this month — and in addition for the primary time in Billboard historical past — three nation artists occupied the highest three areas within the Billboard 100, with Jason Aldean’s “Attempt That in a Small City” at No. 1, Morgan Wallen’s “Final Night time” at No. 2, and Luke Combs’ cowl of Tracy Chapman’s track “Quick Automobile” at No. 3. The pump was primed for one more massive nation music hit.
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Two of these artists had additionally spurred numerous dialog round politics and racial tensions. In 2021, a video of Morgan Wallen utilizing the n-word went viral — after which he went on to have the best-selling album of 2021 in any style. Jason Aldean’s track criticizes the Black Lives Matter motion, and the video reveals him singing in entrance of a courthouse the place a Black teenager was lynched.
In the meantime, Anthony has benefited from some outstanding sign increase. Whereas the video for “Wealthy Males North of Richmond” was posted on-line simply two weeks after the work of an almost nameless fellow — inside days, commentators like Joe Rogan, Laura Ingraham and Matt Walsh have been praising him publicly.
Natalie Weiner is a journalist who focuses on nation music. She notes that music lovers typically recreation this chart algorithm, evaluating Oliver Anthony’s new followers to the fan armies of pop acts just like the Korean band BTS.
“Fan armies have used have bought downloads for a very long time as a result of it has a heavier weight on the charts,” Weiner observes. “So in the event that they need to push an artist up, they may simply buy downloads — you are voting together with your pockets.”
Such efforts often take a good quantity of the music business to drag off, although, and it isn’t clear that Anthony’s followers are as effectively organized as BTS’ — not less than, not but.
Marissa A. Moss, one other famous nation music journalist who co-writes a country-focused Substack with Weiner referred to as “Do not Rock the Inbox,” has one other concept. She believes that Anthony’s skyrocketing fame is one thing of a reverse of what occurred to the nation trio the Chicks, previously often known as the Dixie Chicks, twenty years in the past. Again within the early 2000s, the Chicks criticized the invasion of Iraq. People indignant with their politics started boycotting that band and destroying their CDs. They have been dropped from nation music radio.
“There have been some nation followers who obtained mad and and bulldozed their data,” Moss remembers. However, she says, the spine of that motion didn’t come from devoted music followers. As a substitute, she says, that backlash got here from “extremists on early phases of Web chat rooms and message boards. It wasn’t notably in regards to the chicks themselves.”
In each instances, she provides, the product being bought is much less essential than what it indicators.
Oliver Anthony’s followers say that his lyrics give voice to the sentiments of people that usually get neglected of widespread discourse and popular culture. Natalie Weiner factors out that each performer, no matter style, creates a public persona — and Oliver Anthony isn’t any completely different. She provides that he’s given further credence for “authenticity” in nation music due to how he presents himself and the way a lot that persona is tied up in how mainstream nation music positions itself already.
“The explanation nation works so effectively for that is,” she observes, “is as a result of folks assume that nation music is ‘actual,’ that it is ‘genuine.’ This can be a straight, white, cis-gendered man in a forest with a guitar singing. And that may at all times code as true to folks, even to individuals who don’t love nation music and who do not know something about it. It is so deeply ingrained within the recesses of our collective popular culture.”
