Oliver Anthony performs on the Oliver Anthony live performance on the Eagle Creek Golf Club on August 19, 2023 in Moyock, North Carolina.

Mike Caudill/Billboard by way of Getty Images

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Mike Caudill/Billboard by way of Getty Images

Oliver Anthony performs on the Oliver Anthony live performance on the Eagle Creek Golf Club on August 19, 2023 in Moyock, North Carolina.

Mike Caudill/Billboard by way of Getty Images

The tune “Rich Men 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 Hot 100. That was even earlier than its creator, who goes by Oliver Anthony, was positioned entrance and middle 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’s by no means had a tune on any chart, and “Rich Men North of Richmond” was launched simply over two weeks in the past.

“Rich Men North of Richmond” appears to suit right into a deep vein of protest music, decrying the fats cats who would reap the benefits of the working man. At its floor, Anthony’s tune echoes generations of singer-songwriterly custom. Lyrics celebrating the working man and lady have an extended historical past in American music, from artists together with Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bill Withers and Bruce Springsteen.

Scratch the floor, nonetheless, and also you additionally discover extremist and conspiratorial narratives.

One line, particularly, stands out for its affiliation with a recognized conspiracy principle: “I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere.” It’s 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 demise. Anthony additionally makes snide remarks about obese those who seem to evoke Reagan-era tropes of welfare queens: “Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds,” he chastises, ” Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of Fudge Rounds.”

Elsewhere, Anthony talks about human trafficking and folks making the most of kids, which is a baseless however frequent QAnon narrative. On a more recent tune launched Wednesday referred to as “I Want to Go Home,” he warns that the U.S. is now on the point of a brand new world battle. (NPR reached out repeatedly to Anthony for an interview however obtained 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 films in normalizing their concepts.

Holt says the factor to notice right here is how the tune has been seized on by some far-right influencers, together with individuals who have made a career of sowing discord within the U.S. with disinformation about issues like COVID-19 vaccines or LGBTQ folks.

“If these far-right figures are successful in associating themselves directly with this song,” Holt says, “it could potentially open up a wider audience that they might normally not have access to.”

Anthony’s fast rise has some very specific context this summer time, nonetheless. Earlier this month — and likewise for the primary time in Billboard historical past — three nation artists occupied the highest three areas within the Billboard 100, with Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” at No. 1, Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” at No. 2, and Luke Combs’ cowl of Tracy Chapman’s tune “Fast Car” at No. 3. The pump was primed for one more huge nation music hit.

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 video reveals him singing in entrance of a courthouse the place a Black teenager was lynched.

Meanwhile, Anthony has benefited from some exceptional sign enhance. While the video for “Rich Men 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 generally sport 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 purchased downloads for a long time because it has a heavier weight on the charts,” Weiner observes. “So if they want to push an artist up, they will just purchase downloads — you’re voting with your wallet.”

Such efforts often take a good quantity of the music business to tug off, although, and it is not clear that Anthony’s followers are as nicely organized as BTS’ — a minimum of, not but.

Marissa A. Moss, one other famous nation music journalist who co-writes a country-focused Substack with Weiner referred to as “Don’t Rock the Inbox,” has one other principle. 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, 20 years in the past. Back within the early 2000s, the Chicks criticized the invasion of Iraq. Folks offended with their politics started boycotting that band and destroying their CDs. They have been dropped from nation music radio.

“There were some country fans who got mad and and bulldozed their records,” Moss recollects. But, she says, the spine of that motion didn’t come from devoted music followers. Instead, she says, that backlash got here from “extremists on early stages of Internet chat rooms and message boards. It wasn’t particularly about the chicks themselves.”

In each circumstances, she provides, the product being bought is much less necessary than what it alerts.

Oliver Anthony’s followers say that his lyrics give voice to the emotions of people that typically get overlooked of standard discourse and popular culture. Natalie Weiner factors out that each performer, no matter style, creates a public persona — and Oliver Anthony is not 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 reason country works so well for this is,” she observes, “is because people assume that country music is ‘real,’ that it’s ‘authentic.’ This is a straight, white, cis-gendered man in a forest with a guitar singing. And that will always code as true to people, even to people who don’t like country music and who don’t know anything about it. It’s so deeply ingrained in the recesses of our collective pop culture.”