I’m a little worried about all the hoopla surrounding the songs of latest phenom Oliver Anthony. (For those who don’t know who he is, here is his story, and here are his two latest songs: Rich Men North Of Richmond and I Want To Go Home. Listen to all of that, and what follows may make more sense to you.)
There are two points to be made here, the first being the more important.
Jeff Reynolds at PJM says that Anthony’s voice is evocative of American singers like Levon Helm, B.B. King and John Fogerty. I am fans of all of them, but I can listen to them sing all day. I can’t do that with Oliver Anthony, because there’s too much pain there, and it hurts to listen to him. His voice reminds me of Amy Winehouse, whom I also find difficult to listen to for precisely the same reasons.
It’s clear that Anthony will run the risk of ending up like Winehouse (whose tragedy I explored here): manipulated by others for their own purposes and benefit (whom, thankfully, he’s so far managed to keep at bay — not the least by telling the music industry to fuck off with their multi-million-dollar poisoned apples). I hope he stands firm.
The second part of this is that the agony of which this young man sings is clearly resonating with millions of Americans, because what he’s talking about is real. People are being fucked over by government and people who control the media, people are being fucked over by companies, and people are facing a future that is, frankly, as bleak and horrible as he sees his own.
And here’s where the second bunch of bloodsuckers come into the picture. Expect soon that the political types will step forward, trying to claim the ground that Anthony and so many others like him are standing on, and making politicians’ promises to fix the circumstances that they — all of them — have been complicit in the creation thereof.
I hope that Oliver Anthony tells them, too, to fuck off.
Here’s the takeaway from all this. The reason for Anthony’s runaway success is that millions of people not only feel his pain, but share his pain.
And unless I miss my guess, come 2024 those millions of people are going to vote for the candidate whom they think will best help alleviate it.
The political establishment had better hope that they do it through the vote, by the way, because the alternative is kinda messy.
