Oliver Anthony: Christian Working-Class Hero By Chris Knight (Florida)
The number one song in the US at present is by Oliver Anthony, Rich Men North of Richmond. Here is what Wikipedia says about this city: “Richmond, the capital of Virginia, is among America’s oldest major cities. Patrick Henry, a U.S. Founding Father, famously declared “Give me liberty or give me death” at its St. John's Church in 1775, leading to the Revolutionary War. The White House of the Confederacy, home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the Civil War, is now a museum in Court End, a neighborhood known for Federal-style mansions.” But the allusion is also to Washington DC.
Oliver is a Christian, who through prayer, overcome alcohol problems and decided to sing about the corruption of the US by the power elite. Unlike Jason Aldern’s Try that in a Small Town, the song does not refer to anything other than how the rich corporates are destroying the world of working class men such as himself. I went onto YouTube to see reaction videos by Black commentators, and they were super-positive, seeing how the elites are destroying the economic conditions, much clearer than decadent liberals ever could. And, predictably enough, the chattering class medias have unloaded upon Oliver on various grounds, such as exaggerating the extent of problems that working class people face. Well, they need to try and live on welfare level payments.
The freedom movement has ignored the working class in their program, but now the Left have abandoned white working people, it may be time to get them onboard.
“We better pray for Oliver Anthony, the hard-living factory worker turned Bob Dylan wannabe.
Three days after uploading a backyard video performance of his protest anthem "Rich Men North of Richmond," Anthony read from the book of Psalms before an overflow crowd gathered to hear him sing.
“The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them,” Anthony said, Bible and guitar in hand. “But the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.”
Pray for Oliver Anthony. A month ago, he fell to his knees and asked God to deliver him from drinking and depression. He cried out for a purpose. It appears God gave him one: speak truth to power.
"Rich Men North of Richmond" calls out our nation’s political elite, the politicians in the nation’s capital, just a two-hour drive up I-95 from Richmond, Virginia.
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 you do
The song and video uploaded on Thursday have turned Anthony into the hottest untapped musical prospect since the Jackson 5 won an amateur night contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
OK, that might be an exaggeration. But not by much. "Rich Men North of Richmond" shot up the iTunes music chart, reaching No.1. The video has nearly 9 million views on a tiny West Virginia radio station YouTube page. In a matter of days, his social media following exploded. He has 425,000 Instagram followers and 300,000 followers on Twitter.
Every talent agency in America wants to sign the bearded crooner, who took up singing and songwriting in 2021. Country star John Rich – among others – has offered to produce Anthony’s first album. Conservative influencers flooded social media with words of encouragement and support. Meanwhile, corporate media platforms quickly framed Anthony as a “right-wing” cult hero. They compared Anthony’s acoustic ballad to Jason Aldean’s viral hit "Try That in a Small Town."
It’s an inaccurate comparison. "Try That in a Small Town," released in May, took flight in July after the release of a controversial video that used images of Black Lives Matter rioting.
Anthony’s powerful voice and lyrics power "Rich Men North of Richmond." The video can best be described as bare-bones. Anthony, in a wrinkled T-shirt and old, dusty jeans, belts out his song, strumming a guitar while standing in the woods with his two pet dogs and a microphone. There’s nothing to see. There’s plenty to hear.
Anthony captures the sentiment of the average working man, the typical American unsettled by the overnight transformation of foundational societal norms. The song is a mix of anger, desperation, and repentance. He begins with an admittance of selling his soul for no real reward. He curses and scolds.
The proper comparison to "Rich Men North of Richmond" is Aaron Lewis’ two-year-old "Am I the Only One," which topped the country charts and reached gold status despite radio stations refusing to play it. The difference is that Lewis has been a known artist with a significant following since the 1990s. He started as the lead singer for the rock band Staind and has been a solo country artist since 2010.
Oliver Anthony is from nowhere, a small farm in Farmville, Virginia. He knows he’s picking a fight with the devil. You wonder if he truly understands all the different ways Satan seduces.
We better pray for Oliver Anthony.
His walk with God is just beginning. By his own admission, he’s been dancing with the devil for much longer. The music industry will offer him the best drugs, alcohol, and women the world has to offer. If that doesn’t work, the industry will loose its puppets in corporate media to comb through every aspect of Anthony’s personal history.
Does he have an ex-girlfriend willing to smear him? Has he ever had a testy exchange with a black person at a grocery store? Did he like the wrong Facebook post? Did he vote for Trump?
Oliver Anthony knew “Rich Men North of Richmond” was a powerful song. On August 7, he recorded a nine-minute cellphone video introducing himself to the world and talking about his aspirations for the success of the song.
“It’s going to be the first song that’s going to get out there that’s been recorded on a real microphone and a real camera and not just on my cell phone,” he humbly states while sitting in his truck. “And Lord willing, it’s going to get some traffic and maybe a few of you will drift your way over here. I thought I would have kind of an introduction video on what it is I’m aiming to do here.”
He goes on to explain the meaning and purpose of "Rich Men North of Richmond." He feels the working class has been forgotten. The song is directed at the political elite on both sides of the Democrat-Republican divide. Anthony believes in the uniparty. He sees himself as neither left-wing nor right-wing. He’s also bothered by the normalization of sexualizing kids.
He sounds like me. He sounds like someone who finally realized America’s problems and solutions are spiritual, not political.
“I spent a long time being a little angry, agnostic punk,” he admits. “And I remember talking about sky daddy and cloud papa. I would get so angry about the concept of God because I had perverted what my vision of God was because I looked at the religion of man as God, not God Himself. There is a divine creator that loves you. Sometimes it takes falling down on your knees and getting ready to call things quits before it becomes obvious He’s there. But He’s always there. You got to look out for Him and listen for Him.”
We better pray for Oliver Anthony.”
https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/14/rich-men-north-of-richmond-is-authentic-voice-of-populism/
Oliver Anthony’s beautiful, angry song about the people who run roughshod over ordinary Americans and seek to control their lives is the clearest expression of populism since Donald Trump used his own voice to reshape the Republican Party.
Although the title refers to “rich men” and makes a great rhyme, it is also a screed against control by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, who live in Washington and its wealthy Northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs. “They all just want to have total control.” It is a powerful hymn to the forgotten, put-upon working man, sung with a full-throated, gravelly voice and accompanied solely by Anthony’s acoustic, resonator guitar.
The lyrics are as moving and authentic as Anthony’s voice. There’s a reason his song has become the most downloaded one on the Internet.
Whatever you think about populism, left or right, the lyrics are worth paying attention to. In those three minutes, you’ll learn more about the anti-Washington grievances than in hours of reading erudite analysis by journalists who visited flyover country from their homes in Georgetown, Cambridge, and newly fashionable Brooklyn.
The heart of Anthony’s lament is this:
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just want to 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 s**t, and it’s taxed to no end
Cause of rich men north of Richmond
It’s a battle cry for people who want to resist the control of big money and big government but know they are losing the fight. They resent being investigated by the FBI as potential terrorists when they speak out at school board meetings or affiliate with a traditional branch of the Catholic Church. They see a government eager to prosecute political candidates from one party but not the other. They see violent street riots go unprosecuted and the southern border left open in violation of the law, fairness, and public safety. They see their children shut out of public schools for over a year by teachers unions and so-called experts with more power than evidence.
Their populist cry stretches back to Andrew Jackson and often veers into extremism and attacks on weak, marginal communities, as well as the rich. That’s a legitimate fear, rooted in historical experience of attacks on blacks, Jews, and immigrants.
Anthony’s song has no touch of that nasty message. But you can bet that he will soon be accused of xenophobia, racism, and all the rest of it, now that the song is popular. The people who will dump that sludge at the New York Times and on cable channels are the same people Anthony is targeting. They will use their megaphones to damn him.
It’s impossible to understand the popularity of “Rich Men North of Richmond” without understanding the widely shared grievances behind it. Anthony voices one of them as, “I wish politicians would look out for miners, and not just minors on an island somewhere.” You don’t have to love coal-fired electric power plants to have sympathy for the people who have lost their jobs, their hope, and their future.
Hillary Clinton bluntly expressed the contempt Anthony rails against when she said (in 2016), “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” She devoted a whole chapter of her memoir to regretting she had said it.
Joe Biden didn’t learn Hillary’s lesson. He spoke about coal miners’ future in December 2019 when he visited the mining town of Derry, New Hampshire. He acknowledged the tough times they faced and offered a piece of unsolicited advice, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well … Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!” His comment “was met with silence from the audience.”
How do we know that? Because a Washington Post reporter, Dave Weigel, posted it on Twitter. His newspaper never ran that quote. His editors must have known how dumb it was, and the Washington Post was there to protect him. This is the same news organization that proclaims every day that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” What they lack in self-awareness, they make up for in pretentiousness. Oliver Anthony is singing about them.
His song’s most brilliant line is the one contrasting miners and “minors on an island somewhere.” Ask yourself the question Anthony is implicitly asking, “Whatever happened to the pedophiles on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island or at his homes in Palm Beach or New Mexico?” The answer is “nothing happened to them.” Do we even know anything about who they were? No. Federal prosecutors, who leak like sieves whenever it helps their case, are mum.
Why this silence? The song gives a compelling reason. The people who visited the island are rich and powerful, and so are their friends in government. How many criminal charges have been filed, aside from Epstein’s now-convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell? None. Just ask Oliver Anthony why.
His anguished conclusion follows naturally:
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
A whole lot of people agree, and they’re not passive. They’re furious. Oliver Anthony is the eloquent voice of that fury."
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