Country Protest Song by Oliver Anthony Racks Up 19 Million YouTube Views in 9 Days

Michael Shellenberger sums up the case the left is making that he's an inauthentic plant:

There is nothing authentic about the viral country hit "Rich Men North of Richmond" by Oliver Anthony, say journalists. His real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. He is a "conservative industry plant, astroturfed into existence by all the Daily Wire freaks and some right-wing social media promoter," according to an online sleuth. "The entire concept was likely dreamt up in a Daily Wire/Con Inc laboratory," acknowledged a Trump supporter.

But if it is just a deep folksy fake, it's a great one. Lunsford's song hit number one on the iTunes chart one week ago and was being streamed three million times daily as of last week. The music and lyrics have inspired a remarkably diverse audience of supporters, as shown by the video of reactions to Lunsford, spliced into a viral video by Matt Orfalea above.

To be sure, Lunsford could be a one-hit-wonder. He himself is modest about his abilities. "There's nothing special about me," he wrote on Facebook. "I'm not a good musician, I'm not a very good person."

All Lunsford did was produce a hit song, and yet over the last two weeks, journalists have been attacking him as a racist and far-right grifter.

In truth, there's really only one thing in the song that might be reasonably considered conservative, and that's a single line criticizing welfare. There's nothing racist whatsoever in the song.

And if Lunsford is a grifter, he's not a particularly good one. In his Facebook post, Lunsford said that he lives a 27-foot-long camper that he bought on Craigslist for $750. Its roof is a tarp.

The left is just attempting to destroy him because they don't like the lyrics of the song:

[Verse 1] I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day Overtime hours for bullshit pay So I can sit out here and waste my life away Drag back home and drown my troubles away

[Pre-Chorus]
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

[Chorus]
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
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

[Verse 2]
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

[Verse 3]
Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

[Pre-Chorus]
Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

[Chorus]
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
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

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

I feel all of this:

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

And so they're trying to destroy this guy -- for writing lyrics they don't like.

Ya Boi Zach pointed out that the press doesn't write reports any more. They write only two kinds of propaganda: Puff pieces, and hit pieces. And they don't even wait to collect the facts before choosing which they're writing. They know going in.

So leftist life-ruiners and defamation merchants are claiming that his viral success is actually due to, get this, bots.

Bots and Macedonian Content Farmers? Russian hackers?

Boy they just have that one move, huh?

Is viral sensation Oliver Anthony too good to be true? Too "right" to be true? Or an authentic working class hero, which is something to be?

Since the Virginia native's "Rich Men North of Richmond" song began taking off from out of nowhere less than a week ago, the Appalachian country-folk singer has been acclaimed by freshly minted fans as a phenomenon of the people and accused by detractors of harboring ugly right-wing attitudes or suspected of being an "industry plant."

I've heard another viral sensation accused of being an "industry plant." This annoying Stronk Empowered Feminist group, the Tramp Stamps. The term is pretty vague. It claims that someone who is a nobody and then suddenly gets famous wasn't a total, complete nobody, but actually had some experience in the music industry and had a connection or two here or there.

It's kind of a stupid charge because literally everyone who makes it in any industry has some connection to it. If you're a country musician, even if you're a nobody, I bet you've played some small Nashville bars, if only on a Monday.

Does that mean that an out-of-nowhere nobody isn't an out-of-nowhere nobody? Well, no. Obviously a few people heard of Oliver Anthony before last week -- again, maybe just people who go to bars in his hometown, but I'm sure he's had some small-scale local success.

The idea is that someone the entertainment industry, which cannot stop tripping over their own feet and losing hundreds of millions of dollars every movie, is somehow so smart and capable that they know that if they pretend an almost-nobody is a complete nobody, they can gin up a Viral Sensation story which will make the almost-nobody a huge somebody.

This is stupid. People are idiots and these fucking morons are stepping on my last nerve with their constant stupidity.

The suspicions of progressive musi fans have largely to do with the fast numbers he's racked up as an independent artist with supposedly no industry backing whatsoever. The "Rich Men" video (hosted not on his own YouTube page, but that of a site that promises "real music, real people, real cuture" [sic]) has racked up 12 million views in six days. The red-bearded upstart has accumulated 341,000 Twitter/X followers within days of registering on the site. On the iTunes downloads chart, he has the top three songs as of this writing, and five of the top 10. And while paid downloads are hardly a solid measure of broad success nowadays, Anthony's breakout tune has cracked the top 10 on a much more indicative one, Spotify's daily USA Top 50.

It's a phenomenon not unlike the recent rise of Jason Aldean's similarly right-rousing "Try That in a Small Town," but with a literally friendlier face. His critics maintain he is punching down as well as up, with the song's lyrics about "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") as well as the supposed fat cats in Washington, D.C. that are ostensibly the main target of the tune.

What's known about Anthony, who has a minimal news or paper trail up to this point, comes largely through a YouTube monologue he put up a few days before releasing "Rich Men." In that speech, he declares himself nonpartisan: "I sit pretty dead center down the aisle on politics and, always have," Anthony says, facing the camera from behind the wheel. "I remember as a kid the conservatives wanting war, and me not understanding that. And I remember a lot of the controversies when the left took office, and it seems like, you know, both sides serve the same master. And that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country."

But if an artist is known by the fans they keep, the highest-profile fans Anthony has quickly accumulated are very much on the right side of the aisle -- insta-supporters like former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, firebrand commentator Matt Walsh, former Mumford & Sons banjoist-turned-political gadfly Winston Marshall and far-right country figure John Rich, who said he has had long conversations with Anthony and offered to produce and finance a full album. If Anthony wants to prove the centrism he professes by picking up some less partisan public figures as fans, he may have his work cut out for him, given the way he's instantly been embraced as a hero to the right.

Whether Anthony really is an ideologue in good old boy's clothing remains to be seen.

Weird how no one on the left, like Beyonce, is ever suspected of being an "ideologue" despite packing their "music" with overt propaganda.

No one on the left is ever an ideologue and certainly not an extremist. Why, they're all just centrist moderates who only believe in human values and common sense. Just ask them.

Just ask Jake Tapper, for example.

When he does stick with social issues, he doesn't seem like a political scientist, exactly: The only three "issues" he addresses in his plaints against politicians are high taxes, welfare queens and child trafficking. His focus on the latter, which is the sole topic he addresses in his YouTube monologue, has led to the suspicion that he may harbor or represent QAnon views, since that is a key bugaboo of that movement, although he has been limited in how conspiratorial he has publicly gotten.

Oh no, not that. The last big unexpected hit the left attempted to crush and kill was also accused of pushing the "QAnon conspiracy theory" that child trafficking is real. Now this guy brings up the conspiracy theory that Jeffrey Epstein had an island which he stocked with underage girls for the delectation of his wealthy well-connected Democrat palz, and we all know how completely untrue that conspiracy theory is.

"I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere," he sings, a slightly confusing couplet that seems to indicate belief in a government cover-up having to do with Jeffrey Epstein.

Newsflash, they covered up for him for decades. They still are covering up for him.

Oh lookie here at what I just found: The former Attorney General for the Virgin Islands (location of Pedo Isle) says the Democrat governor pressured her to grant special favors to his good pal Jeffrey Epstein.

Does that mean that this isn't a QAnon conspiracy theory? Or is the leftwing groomer media still going to insist this is all made up?

How about if mega-bankers JP Morgan are also involved?

The former U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general revealed in court documents made public Monday that the governor of the territory pressured her to give convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein special treatment.

In July statements under oath, Denise George testified that Democratic Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. pressured her in 2019 to issue a special waiver to Epstein, which she denied to do, that would allow him to enter the Virgin Islands despite his sex offender status that prevented his entry, according to court documents. Bryan fired George unexpectedly in December, four days after her office sued JPMorgan Chase over its dealings with Epstein, according to The New York Times.

"My thoughts about that even then, in particular then, it did not sit right with me," George said in her deposition about the 2019 request by the governor. "Because my thing is, first of all, why is the Governor, you know, getting involved in this matter that is a law enforcement matter. Or only the Attorney General to make based on law, and that he was doing so on behalf of a convicted sex offender, a sexual offender, child predator, this person, Jeffrey -- Jeffrey Epstein."

The statements from George were part of a deposition in a larger legal battle between the government of the Virgin Islands and JPMorgan. The two entities have thrown a number of accusations at each other, including accusations from JPMorgan that the Virgin Islands looked the other way when Epstein entered the country and the Virgin Islands levying accusations of executive discussions of Epstein surrounding himself with "nymphettes."

Above: Exhibit C, for "Conspiracy Theory"

I'm a little sick of the Pedophilia Deniers of the leftwing groomer press, who invent conspiracy theories about these crimes not actually happening but all being an illusion of QAnon.

Maybe they're being fed these crazy conspiracy theories by RUSSIAN BOTS.

Look at all of this "industry planting."

Everything I don't like is racism, or a RUSSIAN BOT.

posted by Ace at 05:20 PM

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