A Rare Pop Music Dissident: Oliver Anthony and His Viral Hit “Rich Men North of Richmond”
Which other artists are challenging modern taboos?
Dear Readers,
Shiny Herd will be on vacation next week, so why not poke around the archives?
All the best,
Ted
A man in the woods with his dog sings a song and becomes an overnight sensation.
That’s roughly the story of Oliver Anthony and his viral hit “Rich Men North of Richmond.” The controversial song blasted out of the boonies and landed atop Apple Music’s Global Top 100 charts. It’s racked up more than 31 million YouTube views, and has attracted the attention of major news outlets.
Most pop songs don’t address consequential matters of policy or morality, but those that do usually stake out predictably safe positions. Not so with “Rich Men.” It’s not just the earthy aesthetic that’s different from most chart toppers, it’s also the message.
Maybe Oliver Anthony belongs on the very short list of pop stars who really are fighting the power.
Last month I went on a mostly fruitless search for heterodox musical artists whose lyrics challenge modern taboos.
I pointed to a couple of tracks from my youth and suggested that it's unlikely they’d reach the masses today. Suicidal Tendencies’ “Gotta Kill Captain Stupid” lauds self determination and knocks systemic excuses and teenage pregnancy, while Oingo Boingo’s “Capitalism” seemingly stands up for free markets.
I say seemingly because, decades after its release, frontman Danny Elfman said the song has been misunderstood. It’s not really a free market anthem, but a satire in a kind of pre-Stephen Colbert way.
Score another one for the monoculture! Our mandarins must ensure that the young view humanity’s greatest anti-poverty program as a rich man’s swindle.
But let’s set aside Elfman’s clarification. Most listeners won’t be aware of the interview, and the text speaks for itself. Many, as I did for so long, will continue to interpret it as a dissident track.
Given our culture’s newfound fundamentalist streak, I wonder if Elfman would feel free to be so satirical today. What if audiences misinterpret your lyrics? Think of all those sweet film scoring gigs you might lose! Men in Black 8 could go to some other composer!
I’m sorry. I shouldn’t snap at Elfman.
I can’t stay mad at him.
He’s created so much great music (including The Simpsons theme song!), and his yoked physique (at age 68!) does plenty to advance one of my pet causes—weight training.
Let’s return to Anthony.
Does “Rich Men” count as a dissident track?
The quick answer is yes because it challenges monoculture views on consequential topics such as taxation, welfare, and the obesity epidemic.
Check out some of the lyrics:
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 wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere / Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare.
Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds /
But there was more to my initial question.
I was looking for pop songs that met three criteria:
Challenged the monoculture’s expectations
Reached a mainstream audience
Represents a genre other than country
Oliver’s hit certainly satisfies the first two criteria, but it’s a country song, and I said no country songs.
Maybe that’s just my problem. One might argue that excluding country is an arbitrary requirement, but I think it’s warranted.
I don’t follow the genre closely, but my naive assessment is this: Most country music probably conforms to monoculture expectations, but the most severe groupthink exists elsewhere. It seems like country fans are more likely to encounter viewpoint diversity compared to fans of other genres.
(Although I also suspect that, over time, extremely successful country artists exhibit more conformity. Taylor Swift is probably a case in point, but the Swifties can correct me if I’m wrong.)
Last month I also included a related thought, a kind of fourth criterion. Would industry gatekeepers allow a problematic song to reach a mainstream audience?
It’s not just industry execs who enforce conformity. The journalist who pressed Elfman on “Capitalism” behaved like the monoculture’s hall monitor. He couldn’t let one little infraction slide. Gotta keep all those free thinking artists in line!
And official censures are rarely necessary. Most musicians will be good boys and girls on their own.
They’ve grown up in this culture and chances are they affirm its worldview. Some may entertain unconventional ideas, but they know the rules of the game. Chances are good that the incentive to express unconventional views will be overpowered by the incentive to be rich and famous.
For all the ways Big Tech enforces conformity, Anthony shows that technology can still deliver on its promise of democratizing art. He sidestepped industry gatekeepers and delivered his song directly to music lovers. Good for him, but most chart toppers still travel through layers of gatekeepers.
And, again, country music seems especially likely to poke the bear. In fact, it kind of feels like Anthony is occupying the same cultural space that Jason Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town” recently claimed.
So where are all the non-Country songs reaching mainstream audiences with taboo lyrics?
I’ve identified at least two.
Earlier this year Jimmy Levy and Forgiato Blow topped Billboard’s rap charts with “Boycott Target,” and the talented man behind
Substack directed me to Richard Ashcroft of The Verve, who recorded a pointed 2021 cover of John Lennon's "Bring on the Lucie (FREDA PEEPLE).”One writer frets, “Let’s hope Ashcroft isn’t making some kind of anti-lockdown/anti-mask wearing statement.”
Right. Only a monster would do that.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.