If he’d only written the first verse, I might believe it.
Exactly. Don’t be complaining about people on social services and then be surprised when your comments are being held up by other bigots.
I haven’t heard this whole song, but watched the debate. The song wasn’t used as a theme song or anything. They played a bit of and then asked the candidates what they think it means and why it’s so popular…. Basically, why people were so pissed off at Washington sucking ass and how they would fix things. Nothing was being held up.
Tons of downvotes but no responses. Curious.
Curious indeed. Did I misunderstand how the song was used in the debate, or are people here just upset when reality doesn’t align with their hate? I have no idea.
I just watched a video on the controversy and people seems to have three criticisms (only one of which I agree with)
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- It dog whistles right-wing conspiracy theories about underground pedo rings
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- The emphasis on rich men north of Richman is to evoke the north vs south Confederacy era grievances
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- He criticizes people on welfare
The first two seem to have more charitable explanations behind the artist’s meaning. There really was a pedo ring on Jeffery Epstein’s Island. And most people who hear the song aren’t thinking about north vs south, theyre thinking about the rich men in Washington DC.
That said, I don’t like his criticism of welfare and that’s a common right wing talking point that doesn’t even fit in the song thematically.
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Exactly! It starts out alright and then just nose dives into a pool of bullshit. He knows exactly what he was trying to say when writing it.
Watch him come out with a song placating to the left with medicare for all and climate change next.
I don’t listen to country: can someone say what he said that’s so controversial?
The song is about politicians sucking. There is one part where he trashes people on welfare as well. Overall the song is pretty good with the exception of the welfare comment.
He called out Epstein and now people who vote democrat are mad as hell because if they just work hard enough, maybe next year they might get to go to Epstein’s Island 2, electric boogaloo.
SLAMMED! Feels like most headlines are written by 12 year olds these days
It makes it easy to know which articles I don’t need to bother reading
It’s felt that way for a decade
It’s subliminal marketing for a yet to be filmed Space Jam 3.
Space Jam 3: come on and SLAM
You wanna know why? Cuz slam jam!
Space jam 3 but there hasn’t even been a space jam 2 yet
Ignoring the whole welfare lyric for a moment, I think this experience ended up being a hard lesson for this young songwriter.
To borrow a line from Bluey - “…when you put something beautiful out into the world, it’s no longer yours, really.”
I would absolutely fucking love the song if not for that line. I swear I would.
Who knows what his experiences are. Even working at a grocery store, you don’t remember most of the people using EBT. You remember a lady buying only high end meat with the card and getting into an Escalade.
I think fraud is just one of the costs of helping peeps, but I understand how frustrating it can be to have to watch your spending and witness that. Confirmation bias takes over and you don’t remember the poor people buying staples.
People need to remember that this guy did not have a lot of success before this song. It’s a breakout hit from an unknown artist
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Everyone heard him when he said who he was.
This is just him saying that he wants to sell another single in the future.
This song is honestly amazing with Dale Gribble AI vocals. It feels like it was from a parallel universe where King Of The Hill never stopped making episodes.
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The lyrics could have been written by an AI it’s so generic.
I disagree. I think it’s clever. I’m a hillbilly who doesn’t live far from this guy so I may have a little bias.
I just wish like hell he hadn’t included that horrible line about poor folks. He’s off the mark about who his enemy is.
I was too at one point. I was so burned out dealing with those people. Where I’m from that’s all you see. You have people who work every day or you have huge people riding around on mobility scooters with skinny half starved children begging for a bag of peanuts. When that is your experience day in and day out and you haven’t yet had the opportunity to learn why that is, you just get angry at what you see.
I hope he comes to understand the source of those problems and directs his anger at the right people.
He could end up being the protest singer that we need in Appalachia to offer a decent perspective.
When I was younger I wrote an entire mini book on how much hatred I had for the junkies in my community. It would embarrass me right into my grave if I had to read it today. I ended up falling into the trap myself and then I realized it wasn’t a choice they were making. Once I realized that my people had been intentionally poisoned and lied to so some jackass wearing a suit worth more than our houses could grow his bank account, I was furious with myself for what I had believed earlier.
I hope this dude gets some truth and brings more people around.
Sorry if this is a jumbled mess. Trying to type it out at work and keep my train of thought is a terribly difficult thing to do.
Thanks for your perspective. I come from a completely different background but also started conservative and became more left leaning as I learned more about history and economics and social science etc. as well as years of gaining lots of real world experience caring for all kinds of different people. Like you said, it’s not really their choice. Nobody wants to grow up to be on welfare or a drug addict. Of course there is some personal agency but it’s far more complex than what this song and the popular narrative make it out to be.
Unfortunately my parents, many of my coworkers, and of course the entire Republican party still buy into that caricature of evil poor people choosing to steal from the rest of us hard working patriots but it’s easy to forget that they too are brainwashed. I appreciate your reminder to be kind and understanding above all and hopefully we can raise everyone’s collective level of understanding, empathy, and care instead of deepening divides.
Upon an honest look at this song i see nothing wrong with its lyrics
I feel fooled by an internet wave
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Ootl… Who is this red head of the woods and what did they do?
Tldr: some no name dude wrote a country song. One of the lyrics shits on welfare recipients. Conservative hogs lose their mind and his song hits top charts. He comes out backpedaling and claiming we all “interpretted the lyrics wrong” and welfare recipients are victims not leeches. Now everyone is confused.
Can’t forget the part where his personal YouTube channel also has an extensive watch list (“videos to make your noggin’ bigger” or something similar) full of full-on anti-semitic conspiracy theories. Such as Jews secretly orchestrating 9/11.
This is an important detail of which I was unaware. I was almost gonna credit him for snubbing his nose at privileged politicians, but now I can write him off again.
Got a link to that?
ETA: never mind I was having a hard time finding reference to that but then I found this article:
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/rich-men-north-richmond-viral-conservative-anthem-rcna99698
this definitely feeds into my thoughts on who he thinks the “rich men” are
Ohhh. This is the dude who performs the song my coworker was all but having orgasms over yesterday and was trying to make me listen to - “the lyrics are amazing, just listen to them!” She already thinks she’s magnetic from a hepatitis vaccine, and this morning informed me that the moon landing was a hoax, so I think I made the right call in utterly ignoring her and her stupid song.
Oh no… This is just sad. They need a friend and a hobby.
She is a product of her environment. She is also nearly 50.
This guy is also a product of his environment and it seems like his heart is in the right place. That one throw off line really doesn’t seem that bad and I really don’t understand the hate this guy is getting. The left(which i consider myself patt of but damn) needs to do some real self examination if this is who they’re demonizing, over a couple unfortunate words. Like bro is trying obviously. He could’ve easily just pondered to those conservative fuckheads and gotten stupid amounts of mypillow money or something, but he’s making public statements against those people.
“the lyrics are amazing, just listen to them!”
It’s got good wordplay and flow but the content is confused and under informed
The song title rich men north of Richmond is also likely a dog whistle for other crappy bigots like this idiot.
What’s the dog whistle? Washington DC is north of Richmond VA.
Richmond was one of the northernmost slave owning towns during the civil war.
Interesting. Thank you for the context
I think a lot of people get way too uptight over nonsense that is actually bait.
Ah okay I was confused why people were hating on this guy. Before I knew that it sounded like “The machine is wondering why rage against the machine hates them for liking their music again.”
One of the lyrics shits on welfare recipients.
There’s no way he chose Richmond for any reason other than being the CSA’s capital city.
There’s no way he chose Richmond for any reason other than being the CSA’s capital city.
I don’t know anything about this guy or this song, but I think it’s more likely he chose it because Richmond sounds like rich men.
I feel like a lot of people are weirdly jumping to conclusions and trying to make up detailed conspiracy theories. Could it possibly be that DC is north of Richmond, and “rich men” sounds like Richmond?
Could it possibly be that DC is north of Richmond, and “rich men” sounds like Richmond?
I mean if you want to pander to people who are still upset that DC took away their slaves and who would prefer that they could call Richmond their capital, and all you had to do to get people to defend you for that choice was to toss in an awkward half-rhyme, why wouldn’t you?
Just to be clear, this isn’t the guy who made “try that in a small town” which was another meme of a song lately.
If I cared, it would be fun watching this guy pick his lane. But I don’t.
Beau has a good breakdown here:
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I wish Beau was more concise, it’s painful to hear him meander through a topic with no planning
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I said most of what I wanna say yesterday
I don’t think he understands who is listening to him now.
It’s wild that people are so mad about the fudge rounds line. Poor people are often forced into situations where they eat unhealthy foods. Why should food aid programs help fund American obesity rather than tackle it? Is that not the same as declaring tomatoes a vegetable so we can keep serving pizza to to schoolkids?
Oddly I’m not bothered by that line so much. I’m more disappointed with the title and the chorus. Richmond, being the capital of Virginia was a border state of the Civil War. Yes technically Washington DC is very much north of Richmond, but I think the song resonates more with a certain crowd due to the former reason vs the latter.
The song could have been better IMO if it targeted LOCAL governments by state, instead of trying to blame Rich Men North of Richmond. As if Rich Men South of Richmond wasn’t a thing…
Also the line about “I wish they’d care more about miners than minors” is a right wing, qanon reference to Epstein’s victims. Basically saying that he wishes they’d protect coal country jobs over protecting kids from being sex trafficked.
In other songs he’s basically flaking for the qanon nutters.
i’m not buying it. Sure he could be a confederate apologist but if you are writing a song about some rich old dudes in DC screwing the rest of us over its some hard rhymes. When I heard the song he pronounced the word “rich men” and “richmond” nearly identically. I was like what does “rich men north of rich men” mean, then later I heard “richmond north of richmond”
Looking at the lyrics he was complaining that we have people in the streets with no food to eat while there are obese people getting fat on welfare. Sounds like he thinks government is incompetent.
I saw a stat years ago that if we took all the money we spent each year on welfare and just gave the people those programs were trying to help straight cash we would have 5x the amount needed to push them all over the poverty line.
I saw a stat years ago that if we took all the money we spent each year on welfare and just gave the people those programs were trying to help straight cash we would have 5x the amount needed to push them all over the poverty line.
*Something, something can’t give money to poor people. Something, something, give money to rich people. *
The bullshit argument that is all about hating and punishing poor people. With nice extra boot lick the rich.
Yeah I heard that argument from the “right” and “left” yeah people would gamble all their money away then what.
Its basic income, if you want more go produce something. But we should treat people like adults and stop treating them like children.
Sure but I doubt whoever wrote this aong actually intended for the listener to have a reasonable takeaway.
I don’t think Virginia was technically a border state in the civil war? MD. WV, and KY were southern states blanketing Virginia. When the government moved through Baltimore, didn’t they have to point federal hill and Fort McHenry cannons at Baltimore to stop the city from rioting against the government army?
WV and MD were both Northern states in the Civil War. Virginia borders them and was the northern border of The Confederacy.
Edit to add: National Geographic article with a map showing the border. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/union-confederacy/
It doesn’t help fund obesity, it helps feed people.
People who live in a food desert and can only access bad food.
You don’t ask the “keep people from starvation” fund to also be the “fix systemic class based wage structures” fund
Are people mad or is media saying people are mad and then people are agreeing with media.
I often find now that media creates a bunch of controversy on behalf of artists or comedian’s were no shits were given. But like a “man on the street” bit, when confronted by a view like “the song calls people fat” then people who never gave two shits might say this things like " that’s kind of shitty" so it becomes a self fulfilling thing all to drum up sales of some new edgy thing. Songs good though. Been on my playlist on repeat
I have no idea if the media is saying people are mad, the only place I’ve seen angry comments is here on Lemmy. Fair point though, if it’s happening elsewhere it could be media controversy.
I actually don’t see a lot of it in the media. I do see a lot of it in terminally online and too-plugged-in places like Twitter, here, Reddit, Mastodon, and political YT.
I think it’s just as much that it’s good stamps buying the junk food. The point is he’s mad poor people are making a poor choice. I don’t really see any sympathy for the fudge round eater.
“Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for our bags of fudge rounds.”
The implication is that if to pay for your own food, be as fat as you can, but if you are poor you better act how other people think you should act.
The point seems to be less that poor people are making a poor choice, and more that his money is being used to facilitate that poor choice.
People often have the idea that “it’s my money being taxed, why shouldn’t I have a say?” And I can at least sympathize with that.
I can’t.
I’m bothered by it because he’s just repeating Raegan. At least try to convince me you’re a populist, come on.
The thing is, I think with just a tiny shift in perspective, that part of the song becomes about food deserts, and how social programs are often designed to keep people in the system, not help them get out of it.
It is mystifying. The WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) assistance program has nutrition requirements like only healthier foods and certain brands/ingredients allowed. Yet while it’s OK to dictate to pregnant women and new mothers what they are permitted to eat on an assistance program, some people feel it is not all right for the other welfare programs. Always feels like we just csnnot have nutrition requirements for food programs if men use them.
If you’re interested in what this guy is actually saying, vs. what people say that he’s saying, there are a pair of fascinating videos on his channel from before and after the song went viral.
A couple of thoughts I’ve had:
- He is smart AF. This guy isn’t a dumb bigot hopped up on MAGA propaganda. He may have partway fallen for some of it, but that’s why they spend billions of dollars on propaganda: it works.
- The pain and disillusionment he’s making music about are real. It’s stuff that’s happening to him and his loved ones. He’s not a rich, made-for-Nashville country music star.
- He’s definitely absorbed some conservative propaganda, but he also sees through a lot of their BS.
- He goes into the “wellfare” line a bit, and for him it’s about the cycle of government dependence and how people feel trapped by some social programs. I think with a little more perspective he’d be singing about food deserts and how hard it is to eat fresh vegetables when your grocery store is a dollar tree.
- There was a line about “normalizing pedophilia” which makes me think he’s fallen for some of the anti-lgbt+ propaganda from the GOP. I really hope that’s not the case.
- He definitely says the people on the GOP primary stage were who he was singing about in the song, not “populist saviors”.
- I think he’s halfway to realizing that it’s not really a culture war. It’s a class war, and people like him are losing.
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Seems like a cool guy
Interesting to follow all the Oliver Anthony stuff.
Sabby Sabs on Oliver Anthony: Oliver Anthony ATTACKED By Partisan Politics (clip) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQZGPv4m6bc
The Jimmy Dore Show on Oliver Anthony: Working Class Anthem Attacked By Establishment As “QAnon!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g77osCokywc
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