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How about this!

by 90 Comments

Surprise YouTube hit of serious beard action bloke singing heartfelt song. I really like it and find it rather affecting. Could have be a Bruce number once. What do you think?

2

Comments

  1. I dunno about the song, but I have massively enjoyed everyone trying to figure out where to fit this guy into their US culture wars paradigm so they can know what to think about it all.

    • (Anthony or Baron?)
      Without listening it sounds, and is supposed to, like earnest blue collar Broociana, but the lyrics are damnably trite and gauche. (AI: write us a song to appeal to the disestablished and dissatisfied of the midwest ahead the primaries, so we can MAGA……)

      • Oh alright then says ChatGPT. It’s not exactly Guthrie or Dylan, or Bragg for that matter.

        (Verse 1)
        In the heartland, where the cornfields grow,
        There’s a feeling that we can’t let go,
        The disestablished, the dissatisfied, we stand,
        Ready to make change, take a firm hand.

        (Pre-Chorus)
        In the Midwest, under the endless sky,
        We won’t back down, won’t be denied,
        Our voices rise like a prairie wind,
        Together we’ll make a change, my friend.

        (Chorus)
        We’re the disestablished and the dissatisfied,
        In the Midwest, where our dreams collide,
        In unity, we’ll make our voices heard,
        In the primaries, let’s change the world.

        (Verse 2)
        From the rusted towns to the city lights,
        We’ve been waiting for our rights,
        The heart of the nation, we’re rising high,
        No more waiting for the clear blue sky.

        (Bridge)
        In the heartland, we’ll sow the seeds,
        Of a future that’s just what we need,
        We’ll break the chains that hold us back,
        With unity, we’ll stay on track.

        (Chorus)
        We’re the disestablished and the dissatisfied,
        In the Midwest, where our dreams collide,
        In unity, we’ll make our voices heard,
        In the primaries, let’s change the world.

        (Verse 3)
        In the fields and factories, we toil away,
        But we won’t accept the status quo today,
        We’ll fight for justice, for a better way,
        In the heartland, we’ll have our say.

        (Pre-Chorus)
        In the Midwest, under the endless sky,
        We won’t back down, won’t be denied,
        Our voices rise like a prairie wind,
        Together we’ll make a change, my friend.

        (Chorus)
        We’re the disestablished and the dissatisfied,
        In the Midwest, where our dreams collide,
        In unity, we’ll make our voices heard,
        In the primaries, let’s change the world.

        (Outro)
        In the heartland, we’ll stand so tall,
        For a brighter future, we’ll give our all,
        The disestablished, the dissatisfied, unite,
        In the Midwest, we’ll shine so bright.

  4. A nice enough tune and great delivery, but the lines about people on welfare eating too much is the red flag for me. It’s classic ‘kick down’ Trumpism. The same politicians who are using this song to rally their base (eg the cartoonishly vile Marjorie Taylor-Green) are anti- minimum wage, anti-union, anti- any kind of social safety net. Woody Guthrie it ain’t.

  5. Made me think of that wonderful Tim Robbins movie from the early 90s, Bob Roberts

    Given its current lack of availability and the state of US politics, time would seem to be
    ripe a bells and whistles 2024 Election Special Criterion reissue

  8. I have found the reaction to this song really interesting.

    40 years ago, per Twang’s OP, I think this would have been recognised as a lyric coming from the left, addressing as it does the plight of the working man. It says a lot about how the focus has shifted from economic inequalities to other forms of inequality that the lyric was immediately received as being of the right, courtesy of the references to “the obese milkin welfare” and the presence of Richmond in the title.

    I don’t think it was helped by arriving hot on the heels of Joe Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town”, an early Summer country hit which really did deliberately lean into MAGA rhetoric. The operating assumption has clearly been that Anthony is here to repeat the trick, and consequently he immediately drew praise from some of the most reprehensible figures on the right of US politics, and shortly thereafter utter condemnation from the left.

    I thought his response to that support/condemnation was eyebrow raising:

    “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news trying to identify with me like I’m one of them. I wrote that song about those people. That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden. You know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song’s written about the people on that stage and a lot more too, not just them, but definitely them… I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own and I see the left trying to discredit me, I guess in retaliation.

    I do need to address the left … [because] they’re sending a message out that ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ is an attack against the poor. If you listen to my other music, it’s obvious that all of my songs that reference class defend the poor. […] At some point, I will dissect all my lyrics of all my songs if that’s what I need to do.

    I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they’re being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit. Just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place.

    So that being said, I have never taken the time to tell you who I actually am. Here’s a formal introduction:

    My legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. My grandfather was Oliver Anthony, and ‘Oliver Anthony Music’ is a dedication not only to him, but 1930’s Appalachia where he was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times.

    In 2010, I dropped out of high school at age 17. I worked multiple plant jobs in Western NC, my last being at the paper mill in McDowell County. I worked 3rd shift, 6 days a week for $14.50 an hour in a living hell. In 2013, I had a bad fall at work and fractured my skull. It forced me to move back home to Virginia. Due to complications from the injury, it took me 6 months or so before I could work again.

    From 2014 until just a few days ago, I’ve worked outside sales in the industrial manufacturing world. My job has taken me all over Virginia and into the Carolinas, getting to know tens of thousands of other blue collar workers on job sites and in factories. I’ve spent all day, every day for the last 10 years hearing the same story. People are SO damn tired of being neglected, divided and manipulated.

    There’s nothing special about me. I’m not a good musician, I’m not a very good person. I’ve spent the last 5 years struggling with mental health and using alcohol to drown it. I am sad to see the world in the state it’s in, with everyone fighting with each other. ”

    I have no real idea who Oliver Anthony is. It’s quite possible he has a horrible right wing history which will soon come to light (I’m sure people are digging), or that he’ll find himself sucked into that vortex; the market pressures of US politics ultimately dictate that a side must be chosen as you’ll only be punished for fence sitting. Maybe his back story is all bollocks, maybe he’ll turn out to be a fraud. Who knows.

    But I have to say; I don’t find anything inordinately offensive in the lyric of this song. The stuff about the obese and welfare is certainly indelicate, but it’s a detail in a larger work that is ultimately about the fact that the Americans are living in a system where an awful lot of people are getting screwed right now, and where the politicians on both sides seem to be either unwilling or unable to help them. Getting hung up on the fat-baiting strikes me as roughly analogous to listening to This Land Is Your Land and condemning it for the cynical erasure of indigenous peoples; you can do it, but you’re missing the point.

    I think it’s interesting that the song seems to have resonated, and it speaks to the fact that there are an awful lot of people out there right now feeling disenfranchised and not listened to. We could probably stand to get a little better at trying to hear them out sometimes, instead of immediately moving to demonise them, or having Billy Bragg explain to them how they should properly respond to their own lives.

    • Cheap jibe re Billy Bragg. He writes what he feels is right, just as I imagine OA does. Neither is 100% right but who is. I know which song I like the better but given my Dad was the staunchest trade unionist ever (wouldn’t buy his council house at some ridiculously low Thatcher-inspired price for instance) I’m guessing it ain’t hard to guess

      • I like Billy Bragg and his music. If someone had rewritten one of his early songs because they thought he’d got the politics wrong I’d think that was lame and self-aggrandizing too. It’s nothing personal, although I do think the response is emblematic of a wider issue, per the above.

          • I do find it curious that he’s given Arnold a public lecture on “punching down”. I’m fairly sure that Bragg is a millionaire musician with a very successful career spanning four decades and Arnold is…. not. Not sure what direction those particular punches are travelling in.

            • Bragg didn’t grow up well off. He may have done reasonably well, but you can’t say it was by pandering to trends of 80s music. The argument that socialists shouldn’t be allowed to be successful or make any money is ridiculous. Surely having money and sticking to your principles, e.g. paying all your tax and not sticking your learning in the Cayman Islands, is more laudable than abandoning your ideals because the Daily Mail says that’s what everyone does. Ask ‘champagne socialists’ JK Rowling or Jonathan Ross if they should give all their money away to prove their authenticity, or pay the massive amount of taxes they do.

              As for punching down, the explanation on Bragg’s Youtube vid says he’s only offering a solution to the problems offered in the original song in the spirit of Woody Guthrie, not telling him he’s wrong. As a union man myself who had to go on strike to get something even close to a pay increase in line with inflation this year, I’m with him all the way on this.

              I myself have no such qualms with saying the lyrics of Anthony’s songs are dodgy. Blaming unspecified ‘rich men’, insinuating that politicians are paedos and that people on welfare should be means tested on their calorific intake panders to a dangerous mindset.

              • A few thoughts:

                * I’m not arguing that socialists can’t become rich, and I agree that people should pay their taxes.

                * Bragg explicitly accuses Anthony of “punching down” (and in doing so effectively tells him he’s wrong) here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/22/oliver-anthonys-divisive-song-claiming-solidarity-with-workers-only-benefits-the-rich-who-exploit-them.

                * I don’t personally consider the concept of “punching up/down” to be helpful, but my point is that if you’re going to live by that sword you’ll also need to die by it. Anthony is closer in socio-economic status to the people he’s criticising than Bragg is to Anthony. If one of them is punching down, they both are.

                * On the paedos point, he’s clearly nodding to the Epstein thing, which the vast majority of people regard as stinking to high heaven regardless of what political wing you belong to. Anything else is inference.

                * On the point of blaming unspecified rich men, Bragg states in the article above that he was in full agreement with this line. Anthony also doesn’t suggest that people on welfare should be tested on calorific intake, he suggests (rightly or wrongly) that it’s unjust that welfare be used to support overconsumption when there are people homeless and without food. I actually think it’s possible to believe in a strong welfare state and still deplore its abuse.

                I’m not looking to make myself the blog’s ambassador for Oliver Anthony, as I’m sure he’ll be unmasked as a lamentable horror in due course, and I doubt I share his politics. I like Billy Bragg and his music. I thought his response here was self-serving (if he wanted to make these points to Anthony, perhaps it would have been more polite to do so privately). C’est la vie.

  9. On the Beeb’s “The Briefing Room” they did a programme about why the Democrats lost and what to do about it, and a political guru type noted that Hilary talked about people like OA as complete unbearables – with their guns, awful country music, going to church, non-gym bodies and flags on the lawn. And the thing is, they don’t like it. She noted they are characterised by Homer Simpson – fat, lazy, beer swilling etc etc. Hilary barely visited there and talked about gender neutral toilets and pronouns rather than where their jobs had gone. Trump visited a lot and basically said “your lives are hard because these people hate you, don’t care about you and will do nothing to help you”. Guess who they voted for.

    So it’s easy to call him a redneck etc but I think I can understand what he’s saying and where it could easily lead us again. He’s hardly being militant. Country music being the white man’s blues, it sounds more like a cry for help to me.

    Here’s the prog. 16 mins in.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09jvvp2

  10. Just stumbled across this recent clip from opera singer and tutor, Elizabeth Zharoff a.k,a, the Charismatic Voice.

    Several of us are fans of her analysis of pieces of music from a technical point of view, so it was fascinating to hear her comments on Oliver Anthony.

    She can avoid taking any kind of political stance. For her it’s all about the voice.

    And she’s most definitely impressed.

  11. As always with this sort of thing, I find myself wondering what exactly are these changes that he finds so objectionable? And as is so often is the case, I find myself wondering if he just misses a time when black people “knew their place”?

      • Of course there’s no specific racial reference in this song. However, implicit in such efforts is “I want the US to be what it was – the land of the free honest, hardworking white man”. Trump got elected by such people.

      • He’s racist because he’s poor, white, looks like he eats squirrels, comes from a flyover state and the wrong people like his song. Let’s hope they don’t all start listening to the Stones next week, or they’ll be racist too, just like Springsteen was a Reaganite in the 80s.

        Either that or because there’s a line that laments the state of the world (with no mention of race). We all know that here on the Afterword we don’t tolerate that kind of backwards-looking hate speech, that craven lust for an idealised past.

          • Wislon’s pipe was, like his famous Gannex raincoat, a prop – he apparently preferred small cigars when out of the public eye.

            Having kept the UK out of Vietnam, started the OU, legalized abortion and being gay, he still ranks as the best PM the UK has had in my lifetime.

            He was also apparently Liz’s favourite PM

          • I’ve been sellin’ my soul, grinding away
            Overtime hours for bullshit pay
            So I can sit on the blog and let my thoughts go astray
            Just a biding my time for Record Store Day

            It’s a damn shame what the music’s gotten to
            For people like me and people like you
            Wish I could just wake up and it be 1965
            But it ain’t, oh, it ain’t

            Livin’ in the new world
            With an old soul
            These tastemakers on Pitchfork
            Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

            With their hippity hops and their fake R&B
            And you know that they never owned a vinyl LP
            ‘Cause their collections ain’t shit and they’re all in the cloud
            ‘Cause the tastemakers of Pitchfork
            Like their music too loud

            I wish time had frozen, music was still groovy
            And not just all this auto-tune
            Lord, we got folks in the street, listening to repetitive beats
            With basslines that should clear the room

            But, God, if your music is pop, and you’re dressed in hot pants
            Then you’ll feel the sting of my online rants
            Young men won’t listen to Dylan, like mother nature decreed
            ‘Cause all this damn modern music does is make my old ears bleed

            Lord, it’s a damn shame what the music’s gotten to
            For people like me and people like you
            Wish I could just wake up and it be 1965
            But it ain’t, oh, it ain’t

            Livin’ in the new world
            With an old soul
            These tastemakers on Pitchfork
            Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

      • The resentment being specified towards people “North of Richmond” I took to be a reference to Union, as opposed to Confederacy. The Confederates being the people who fought a war because “rich men North of Richmond” had told them they couldn’t own other human beings as property.

  12. Let me repeat – I have no idea re OA’s politics, from the little I have read he seems a decent enough cove. What I do know is that, whether it was his intention or not, the song has been taken up by a whole bunch of right-wight sites populated by not very nice people.

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