Once Again I Must Defend Country Music

Bad songs and worse beards

Oliver Anthony performing his bad song “Rich Men North of Richmond”

Have you been online in the last couple of days? Then there’s a good chance you’ve seen the video of Oliver Anthony singing his song, “Rich Men North of Richmond.” The track is, well, bad to say the least. The guitar is fairly solid, his voice is all right, the lyrics are god awful and the beard is even worse. Oh, the dogs are fantastic though.

Let me cut you off a few choice lines:

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay

. . .

'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

Where to begin?

The song is being hailed by right-wingers and blue check goobers on Twitter as the new anthem of the working class. Finally, a man in the woods telling it like it is. Of course, he’s decided that the problems with low pay and crumbling quality of life are because of taxes and obese welfare folks. People love it when conservatives play their classics.

Oh and of course the song wouldn’t be complete without an allusion to Jeffrey Epstein. I would actually like to propose a new internet adage. Everyone knows about Godwin’s Law — the longer a conversation goes on, the higher the chances of Hitler being mentioned. The 2023 version of this seems to be that any conversation online will inevitably punt to pedophilia as a weird scapegoat for all societal ills. Call it the Pizzagate Law.

There’s also the complete lack of genuine rise to fame with this song. It’s been platformed by conservative media publicists and catapulted into the spotlight. Of course, the setting is perfect. He’s in some woods with two dogs laying at his feet in an unkempt field. What could be more working class than that? It feels designed to evoke the myth of the blue-collar lifestyle. I’ll wait a week until we see that he owns one of those hundred thousand dollar pickup trucks that make men feel like they’re cosplaying as salt-of-the-Earth folk.

I will defend one aspect of this video, though. A lot of leftists online are saying that clearly he’s not working class because the video sounds good and is shot professionally. And I think we should recognize that poor folks are capable of owning an iPhone, a decent microphone, and editing software. Do I think he’s genuinely living paycheque to paycheque? Almost certainly not. But good sound quality is not the slam-dunk you think it is.

Now, thanks to this terrible song, progressives online are using it as another excuse to write off country music. And my very specific Bat Signal has been activated. The commissioner went to the roof, flipped on the spotlight, and a banjo lit up the night sky.

I’ve seen this meme going around online, and it’s been driving me crazy. There are fantastic country music artists out there singing about politics, and they don’t deserve to be written off because of one guy and his bad song. (Never mind the implication that the banjo is indicative of bad country music. I won’t go deep here into how it has a long history of being brought over from Africa by enslaved people and popularized in the American South by black folks. Also I picked one up last week and it’s the most fun I’ve ever had with an instrument.)

So I want to recommend some country tracks by musicians that sing about politics without attacking welfare recipients or using weird, alt-right dogwhistles.

• “Vanlife” by Willi Carlisle is a song about being poor but rebranding it as #VanLife. Great stuff. His song “Life on the Fence” is about struggling with queer identity. Also excellent.

• “Sinners, Saints, and Fools” by Brandi Carlile is about xenophobic bible thumpers failing to live by the rules of the Book they claim to love.

• “Goodbye Mary” by Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway is a track about domestic violence and abortion access. It’s a sad one, so I’m warning you now. For something lighter and fun, try her song “Down Home Dispensary” about legalizing weed in Tennessee.

• “Won’t Fence us In” by Nick Shoulders which covers a lot of the same themes of “Rich Men North of Richmond” but is far better.

• “Redneck, Unread Hicks” by Adeem the Artist. This song is an excellent answer to Oliver Anthony’s. It’s about the changing demographics of “working class” America and country music.

• “Persephone” by Allison Russell. Okay, I saved the absolute best for last. Russell’s voice is stunning on this track about fleeing from her abusive family to her girlfriend, Persephone. It’s unbelievable.

Remember that one bad song does not a bad genre make. Otherwise we’d have to write off all of pop music thanks to Meghan Trainor.