The Oliver Anthony Phenomenon IS the Trump Phenomemon
An Overnight Music Star Taps into Working-Class, American Populism
If you are American and have had a pulse in the past couple weeks, you have probably witnessed a thirtyish, ginger-bearded man from Farmville, Virginia, pretty much go from no one to supplanting Taylor Swift at the top of the music charts. His song, “Rich Men North of Richmond”—among other folksy ballads like “I Want to go home” and “I’ve Got to Get Sober”—are getting plenty of attention on the likes of iTunes and in other places, and people from all over are showing up to his impromptu concerts. Odd rumors and reports have abounded: Oliver Anthony—a stage name, borrowed from his grandfather (his real name is Christopher Lunsford)—passed on an $8 million record deal, he lives in a cheap camper on a $100K piece of land, he’s making $40,0000 a day on his song’s downloads, and he sometimes reads from the Bible and sings the national anthem at shows.
Time will show whether Anthony has the chops to stay in the spotlight for very long. He does seem to have a legitimately-humble presence about him, but it’s far from clear to me that he really knows what he’s doing or has the business acumen (or desire?) to launch a career here. Anyway, I’m mostly interested in what this whole viral episode says about us.
I would like to make the case that Anthony has—intentionally or not—tapped into something. A collective mood or feeling. He points this out himself in one video I watched last night in which he appears to be driving and reflecting on his biggest song and its effect on people. He chuckles while admitting he’s not a great musician and that he’s just okay as a singer, but that the success of “Rich Men North of Richmond” is that it exists in people, thus the wide response. The song itself isn’t even particularly-coherent, but it doesn’t need to be, again because it’s sort of an energy-in-the-air thing. As one ought to be able to predict even from the song’s title, it’s a populist tune (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…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).
If Anthony has tapped into a kind of populist frenzy, I would also like to make the case that the Anthony phenomenon is basically the Trump phenomenon. And probably the Jordan Peterson phenomenon (who’s latest controversy is that a Canadian court ruled that the College of Psychologists of Ontario have a right to pull his license to clinically practice until he submits to participation in a re-training in relationship to his supposedly “unprofessional” social media presence) after the Trump phenomenon and the Joe Rogan phenomenon after that.
Which doesn’t mean that Anthony is Trump (or Peterson or Rogan). While Anthony has pretty quickly been associated with the political right, he has been doing his own public relations work to assure media and fans that he’s a political centrist and that the Republican candidates for president who co-opted his song for their recent debate are part of who “Rich Men North of Richmond” critiques. I think I believe Anthony, but I also know its not going to matter much, in part because of his cultural presentation (rural, for starters, and also religious and somewhat patriotic, at least in a nostalgic way) and also because of his provocative lyrics (“If you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds), which goes against the faux language sensitivity and politeness that at least the Democrat mainstream has placed as front-and-center gospel to its own platform.
So what is, exactly, this sentiment and movement that Anthony has woken up in one more form? This will be an imperfect description, but I will make the attempt anyway. I think the starting point of what Anthony, Trump, Peterson, and even Rogan appeal to in their audiences is an observation and recognition of social class challenges. So a point that Peterson belabors (correctly, in my view) is most climate proposals basically function by further leveling the poor. That’s just one example. While all of the names I’m discussing here have figured out and/or been given lives that aren’t poor (for now, at least), they recognize that there are huge swaths of people who’s primary obstacle to a better life is one of employment. Meaning not that they can’t or don’t work, but rather that the jobs they do work or are in demand for tend to be low-paying and either quite physically-strenuous or mentally-numbing. See the David Graeber book Bullshit Jobs for more there.
If you are an American who cannot get a career going, there are then huge implications for your ability to find a good significant other relationship and/or build a family. And if you feel like you are losing on both of these fronts, one of the landing spots might be addiction (I’ve gotta get sober, I’ve gotta start livin’ right / And I don't know how it's gonna go / But it ain't gon' happen tonight / So pour 'em down strong 'til I drown / And if I wake up tomorrow when that sun comes back around / I'll be wishin' I was sober).
It is this population of working class and poor who perhaps feel the most condescended by the culture milieu of the formally-educated and white-collar professional class, and yet they mostly do not seem to feel the same from the likes of Anthony and Trump and Peterson and Rogan. Again, to be as clear as possible, that does not mean that our Populist mood and attraction is without dangerous edges, and one needs to look no farther than the circus of January 6 or the pockets of white supremacy (of the real and potentially-violent variety rather than the endless language games coming out of academia and spreading into corporate life). Everyone does not need to use the same language to talk about everything, but prejudices of all kinds—including racial ones—can psychologically nurse a person’s sadness and give him or her a target for blame, and we do well to be aware of this potential pitfall.
Which oddly brings me to my next point about the commonality of the these seemingly-overnight and yet surprisingly-long-lasting cultural sensations: the people who flock to them are almost surely more diverse than they usually get credit for. All kinds of generalizations and accusations get levied at the likes of Peterson’s crowds, though rarely with much empirical validity, and I suspect the same will happen with Anthony. In either case, the sheer numbers of things like sellout crowds and millions of songs downloaded or books bought suggest that it isn’t only one kind of person who’s leaning in, but thankfully in the case of Trump, we actually track things like racial and ethnic voting records and trends, so there is some accountability on the matter. The Columbia sociologist Musa al-Gharbi—who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years back at a conference—has, again and again done the gritty analysis of the numbers, and here are a few things I have learned from reading his work. Even in 2016, Trump did significantly better with racial minorities than recent Republican candidates for the presidency, and in spite of his often-harsh language around immigration (and later about the Coronvirus), his percentage of the Hispanic vote was nearing 50%. In 2020, his percentage of the vote went up in almost all minority categories, especially so with black men. Oh, and more Asian women than men voted for Trump the second time around.
Though I shouldn't have to offer this disclaimer, I, by the way, voted for Trump a grand total of zero times. Though I’ll say I was a little tempted the second time around after watching a pre-Covid booming economy, the absurdity of the way the Covington kids got attacked and Jussie Smollett immediately believed, and perhaps most of all, in an act that seemingly no other American politician would have done, the way Trump immediately (and maybe naively?) “pulled the trigger” on killing Qasem Soleimani. Watching Iran talk tough and then cowardly bow thereafter sure was something. Don't even get me started on the draconian approaches we implemented and embraced across the land in 2020 (Trump seemed to be more reluctantly going along rather than the driver of the ship during this time) with so little solid knowledge to back any of the measures up, and the awful way dissenters of all stripes were treated. Before any of that, I had watched the 2020 State of the Union address and was absolutely sure the man was headed for a landslide reelection. It was theater, as it always is, but it was good theater, and Trump's capacity for that is just one of the strengths his political opponents refuse to see because they're too blinded by his brashness to be able to see his formidability. It's not a virtue to have a shitty scouting report, in case that's not obvious.
If you want another example of Trump's skillful showmanship, think back to the debate immediately following the release of the Trump tape in the lead up to the 2016 election, and recall the way in which he—his campaign all but dead in the water, complete with talk about replacing him that late in the game with another candidate—paraded multiple Bill Clinton accusers before a national audience. (Point made.) The man has the capacity to surprise, and he always seems to bounce back, and again, these traits are to his credit.
On the other hand, the way Trump so idiotically went out after losing in 2020 validated my choice not to vote for him that time either, though the American people deserved a lot better than that stupid, second impeachment trial (that was bad theater, and there’s no honor in trying to beat up on a dead horse), but his election in the first place got my attention a long time ago in a way it should have for an entire media complex that had spent so much energy profiting from his presence in the race while also insisting he would never, he could never, win. Well, they were wrong about that, and it was evidence of their own denial on the matter. And in a world full of unimaginable cruelty and violence, He said a mean thing at the press conference! also just never struck me as very serious. He often doesn't save his worst for private life, which is why there are a lot scarier people in the world than him (like the Clintons). He tells on himself!
Alright, so Trump aside, we have a social class element that is tied to employment opportunity, and we have a more diverse coalition than is convenient; now let’s back up to the point Anthony has been trying hard to get across publicly, which is that this whole thing really isn’t a predictably-partisan instinct or response. Put Anthony in the same room as Trump, Peterson, and Rogan, and I bet a fascinating discussion ensues, but you’re going to find plenty of ideological disagreement. To consider Rogan anything like a right-winger is especially laughable. There are people who voted for Obama and then Trump and would probably break for Bernie Sanders if ever given the chance. That’s not particularly coherent, but again, who cares? The drive toward this widespread appeal I am attempting to describe is largely an emotional one.
Last characteristic I want to point out about these cultural waves, though certainly not the least important one: I suspect that one of the other convictions that all of the names I’m mentioning here default toward is the belief that in this world you mostly ought to be allowed to state that which you believe, in good faith, to be true. Without being harassed or shamed or having your livelihood taken away. You think younger populations ought to be hesitant to vaccinate for a relatively-new shot in the midst of a worldwide pandemic? You get to say it. If you think genitalia manipulations for gender purposes in adolescents are a bad idea, you get to say it. You think food stamps are enabling an obesity crisis, you get to say it. You think there ought to be a wall between Mexico and the United States, you get to say it. You think concerns about human influence on the climate are overblown, you get to say it.
Yes, of course you’re going to be wrong sometimes, we all are. There’s grace enough for that. The concerns about sensitivity and harm are valid, too, but not enough to justify coercing huge swaths of the population from their values and perceptions precisely because the sensitivity and harm concerns tend to play themselves out as conflicting trade-offs rather than zero sum obviousness. This or that resource allocation, empathizing with this person’s or group’s concern or that one’s. Was Globalization helpful or harmful? Well, it depends on for whom. For some people, it was very profitable; for others, it decimated lives and whole communities.
And this is precisely it: the people who are flocking to Anthony’s music like to Trump’s rallies and Peterson’s lectures and books and Rogan’s podcast feel seen (without contempt!) by those figures. Perhaps there is something exploitative about Trump’s message and approach in particular, but in order to exploit you have to at least have some awareness of. Which is way different than just perpetually dismissing and censoring and plugging one’s ears and singing la-la-la to drown out the inconvenience of so many voices that come from real lived experiences.