How an Unknown Country Singer Topped the Charts—and Sparked Debate

For some time now, there has been a growing divide in country music. On the one hand, changemakers like Mickey Guyton, Orville Peck, and Allison Russell are attempting to expand the genre’s horizons to be more inclusive. On the other, songs like Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” which peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this summer, have critics calling them out as conservative dog whistles.

The latest entry in this divided landscape is Oliver Anthony’s blue-collar anthem “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which has ascended to the top of the Hot 100 and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s country charts, beating out songs by established artists like Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs on the country charts and Taylor Swift on the Hot 100. According to Billboard, this made him “the first artist ever to launch atop the list with no prior chart history in any form.” In parallel with his rapid rise, Anthony quickly became the subject of headlines as conservative politicians and talking heads embraced his song.

Anthony, whose real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford and who hails from North Carolina, has been releasing music on Spotify since September 2022, when he released “Aint Gotta Dollar.” He’s also dropped several one-off singles over the past couple of months, though none made as big of a splash as “Rich Men North of Richmond” did when he uploaded the video to YouTube on Aug. 8. 

The country-folk song sees Anthony singing about the perils of working in a capitalist society in which it feels nearly impossible for the working person to get ahead: “Workin' all day/ Overtime hours for bullsh-t pay,” he sings. Later in the song, he says he wishes “politicians would look out for miners/ And not just minors on an island somewhere.” Another lyric: “We got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat/ the obese milkin' welfare.” In the sparse video, Anthony is seen singing into a microphone while strumming a guitar with the woods serving as his backdrop, flanked by sleeping dogs and a camping chair.

The video racked up millions of views soon after it was published. After less than two weeks, the song currently has over 32 million views on YouTube and 15 million streams on Spotify. Much of its popularity comes from social media, where conservative figures have promoted the song and spoken about how it lines up with their values. According to the New York Times, its rapid ascension on the charts also comes from 99-cent digital downloads on online marketplaces like the iTunes store. “Despite streaming now accounting for more than 80 percent of music consumption overall, paid downloads are weighted more on the charts, a quirk exploited regularly by pop superfans devoted to acts like [Taylor] Swift or the South Korean group BTS,” the publication reported.

The song has become a favorite among self-declared conservatives and politicians including Matt Walsh, Benny Johnson, Jason Whitlock, former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whitlock, a columnist and podcaster, uploaded a video to X (formerly known as Twitter), calling Anthony “the Donald Trump of music,” saying, “Corporate media will either try to seduce him out of what he's committed to doing, or smear and silence him.”

Greene applauded Anthony for making a song for “forgotten Americans,” and Lake wrote that she “gets chills” every time she listens to it. “This is the message that Washington needs to hear because this is how our people actually think and feel,” continued Greene.

Many people also criticized the song, including singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, who released a pro-unionization song that reworked Anthony’s lyrics. “Join a union/ Fight for better pay/ You better join a union, brother/ Organise today,” Bragg sings. He continues, “The culture wars are here to distract while libertarian billionaires avoid paying tax,” with lyrics arguing that climate change is a much more pressing issue than debates about bathrooms that have become flashpoints for conservatives. In an op-ed for The Guardian about Anthony’s message, Bragg writes, "If the poor are fighting one another over racial hierarchy or cultural grievance, their anger will be directed away from the people responsible for their plight—the rich who exploit those in work and abandon those in need.” A musician named Jonathan Mann, who is known for writing a song a day for the past 15 years, created a song in response to Anthony’s called “Fat People on Welfare (Are Not Your Enemy).” He says that Anthony’s song ignores the real issues in the U.S. and trades in topics, like the parody song's title, that are “Fox News talking point[s].”

In a video published on Aug. 7, the day before the “Rich Men North of Richmond” video was published, Anthony said that he sits “pretty dead center down the aisle on politics and always have.” The singer has done limited press, granting an interview to Fox News in which he lamented the state of the nation and discussed why he thought the song was resonating. He has been performing to what appear from videos shared on Instagram to be decently sized audiences at local venues in North Carolina, and his social media following has skyrocketed to more than 1.2 million between Twitter and Instagram following the virality of the song.