A Virginian’s Take on Oliver Anthony: Righteous Anger, Woeful Misdirection
Song: “Rich Men North of Richmond,” by Oliver Anthony
When I heard that the №1 song in the country was by a Virginian, I was naturally intrigued. I’m pretty much Virginia’s favorite person- I’ve lived and traveled all over, from Arlington to Roanoke to Charlottesville to the Cumberland Gap, and have the state flower tattooed delicately underneath my wrist. There are very few places I don’t know and I can give you instant driving directions to anywhere with at least a stoplight or two. Listening to “Rich Men North of Richmond” was both a nod and a cringe. I get why you’re angry, buddy. But you’re taking it out on the wrong people.
It’s difficult to understand Mr. Anthony if you’re not familiar with the state of Virginia. I’ve seen a lot of news outlets refer to him as “Appalachian.” He’s not- he lives about an hour and a half away from Appalachia, in a region called the Piedmont. It’s a landscape known for its gently rolling hills and rich natural resources like forests and arable farmland, but it’s a pretty sparsely populated area- mostly home to agricultural and industrial ventures like large-scale poultry operations and lumber mills, dotted with the occasional yuppie winery or wedding venue. And it’s mired in economic depression. Many of the small towns are mostly shuttered; the only open stores, and sources of employment, are the Food Lion and Dollar Tree paying the state’s $10.25 minimum wage. When wealthy Northern Virginia threatened to secede several years ago, the rest of the state would have been the second-poorest in the country next to Mississippi.
Mr. Anthony lives in Farmville, a township of about 7,000 where the population has steadily declined and the median household income is $26,000 a year. Almost a quarter of its citizens live below the poverty line. Even though this data may be skewed due to the large college student population, it’s still an indicator that Farmville doesn’t have a lot of high earners or booming career opportunities.
Oliver Anthony claims to have made $12/hour as a factory worker. When you put that into an Excel spreadsheet, the math looks pretty grim. After taxes, Mr. Anthony would have made $1,640/month, with an average local rent and utilities cost of $975/month. There’s no public transportation and the area’s pretty spread out, so he would presumably have to factor in a car payment, insurance, and gas. Even with an aging clunker at $300/month, cheapskate coverage through The General for $70/month, and a couple tanks of 87-octane at $250/month that only gets him to work and back, Mr. Anthony is left with $45/month for food, clothes, medication, toiletries, and cell phone bill. (His annual income puts him just above the threshold for SNAP, although he does qualify for Medicaid.) But yeah. I’d be pretty pissed too.
“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. . .”
The problem comes when Mr. Anthony blames his situation on taxes and overweight people using food stamps. For starters, Farmville isn’t paying much in taxes- they’re kept afloat by their affluent northern neighbors, who are the main source of state funding. The area’s high rates of obesity are caused by “food deserts”; if you don’t have extra cash or a decent car to drive 15 miles to the grocery store for a $4.99 pack of blueberries, you’ll head down half a mile to the gas station for a $1.25 bag of Fritos. I was a nursing student at a hospital which had a large Appalachian Medicaid population and the logistics of healthy eating were dizzyingly complex. I remember a patient, who had just suffered a massive heart attack, explaining why he would likely continue a processed diet of Spam and Ho-Hos: “I can’t drive to the Safeway because my old truck won’t make it up the mountain and I can’t afford to get it fixed or inspected. So I get everything from the convenience mart down the road.” Clearly this guy, on $800/month disability, is not the source of Oliver Anthony’s financial issues.
Mr. Anthony’s path to viral stardom is a little confusing. While he’s a fairly good singer and a decent guitarist, it’s rare to have a country-folk number top national charts- leading to speculation that conservative influencers may have significantly bumped up his video views. But after his song was played at the GOP debate, he claimed politicians had “weaponized” his message. Although he’s accepted larger gigs, he recently turned down a multimillion-dollar record deal. He seems to want to paint himself as a “man of the people,” a rebel-without-a-cause yodeling in front of a deer blind on behalf of the downtrodden rural laborer.
But that’s not any way to enact meaningful change, either for himself or the working class he claims to represent. Folk is rife with visionaries who presented a problem and then an answer; Pete Seeger (anti-fascism), the Drive-By Truckers (gun control), and Tyler Childers (racism and civil unrest.) A place like Farmville would benefit from a massive investment in education, infrastructure, job training, affordable housing, and public transportation, funded by dollars that Mr. Anthony squawks are “taxed to no end” (although a majority of that financial burden would likely fall on Northern Virginia). For probably the first time in his life, Oliver Anthony has a platform to encourage anti-poverty measures. And it’s painfully frustrating that he’s not using it.
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