Jay Caspian Kong
New Yorker, Aug. 15, 2023
“The main reason this song resonates with so many people isn’t political,” the conservative blogger and filmmaker Matt Walsh tweeted. “It’s because the song is raw and authentic. We are suffocated by artificiality. Everything around us is fake. A guy in the woods pouring his heart over his guitar is real.”
Nobody really knows why a song becomes popular, especially now that record companies have mostly ceded their promotional efforts to the mysteries of social-media algorithms. When I start to hear a song more than a few times, I assume that it became popular on TikTok as part of some trend that I would rather not decipher. “Rich Men North of Richmond,” an overnight viral hit by an unknown country singer named Oliver Anthony, is the rare popular song that actually comes with a ready-made explanation. The track—which starts out with the lyrics “I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay”—has racked up millions of listens across social platforms, and, as of Tuesday morning, was the most streamed song in America on the iTunes platform. The short time line around Anthony’s virality and the seemingly synchronized way in which right-wing pundits, such as Matt Walsh and Jack Posobiec, have tweeted enthusiastically and almost apocalyptically about “Rich Men North of Richmond” have turned the singer into a messianic or conspiratorial figure. Depending on your politics, he is either a voice sent from Heaven to express the anger of the white working class, or he is a wholly constructed viral creation who has arrived to serve up resentment with a thick, folksy lacquering of Americana.
Let’s get two obvious things out of the way. The chorus of the song, which goes, “Livin’ in a new world / With an old soul / These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control,” should rightfully perk up the ears of anyone who might wonder who those “rich men” might be. There has also been some online hand-wringing about a rant in the middle of the song against “the obese” who are “five foot three” and “three hundred pounds” and “milkin’ welfare.” Tax dollars, Anthony sings, should not be spent to buy them “bags of fudge rounds,” which, along with a line about how “your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end,” is the only really explicit political comment in the lyrics. These specific complaints, I imagine, are not what titillated the conservative base, unless there’s some secret plan to cut people who are short or of unhealthy weight off of entitlements. What matters more is the part where Anthony proclaims: “It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to / For people like me and people like you.” … [To read the full article, click here]