Oliver Anthony criticizes conservatives who try to align themselves with him in a new video statement posted to YouTube.
    • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
      335·
      10 months ago

      His politics amount to Jews running the world and queers being child molesters so don’t expect much in the way of critical thinking.

    • Stern@lemmy.world
      25·
      10 months ago

      The disgust makes sense when it’s Rage Against the Machine and conservatives but homey apparently hasn’t looked at mainstream country in the past 30+ years because it ain’t “Folsom Prison Blues” anymore its “I Love America And My Ford Truck (Unless Ford Goes Woke)”

      • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        You know how deliberately engineered, autotuned pop music and its popularity doesn’t really represent real music? Same goes for “country”. All of those carbon copy songs about ford trucks and beer in the bed of ma pickup chucklefucks doesn’t represent the real music being made in and adjacent to that genre. Much like pop, it’s music for idiots. It moves volume in America because of the size of that audience.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
      161·
      10 months ago

      I listened to the song with no knowledge that Republicans were using it as a dog-whistle; I immediately thought it was written about rich conservatives, then I found out the dumbfucks had adopted it as their own.

      I can see why he’s pissed off.

      • balderdash@lemmy.zip
        1·
        10 months ago

        I’m not the target audience, so maybe that explains why, but I don’t hear any whistling in the song.

    • afunkysongaday@lemmy.world
      11·
      10 months ago

      Why would you expect someone to understand a group of people just because they like a song they made? Art being misinterpreted, or interpreted in a way the artist never intended, is the oldest story in the book. Long story short it’s not at all “odd that the singer doesn’t understand his fanbase”.

    • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de
      52·
      10 months ago

      Maybe it’s not his “fan base” that he doesn’t understand, but rather than annoying 10% butt-hurts that always cause trouble.

    • Bizarroland@kbin.social
      515·
      10 months ago

      I mean I don’t have any fans and I don’t understand because I’m actually pretty cool.

      Everyone just keeps saying I haven’t met the right group yet but like there aren’t too many groups left.

  • i_cant_sports@lemmy.ml
    712·
    10 months ago

    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.”

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    707·
    10 months ago

    Everyone heard him when he said who he was.

    This is just him saying that he wants to sell another single in the future.

      • theangryseal@lemmy.world
        212·
        10 months ago

        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.

        • nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee
          6·
          10 months ago

          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.

        • foggy@lemmy.world
          101·
          10 months ago

          The thing that’s wrong is that he is saying rich people want total control while saying he wants to limit the control folks on welfare have over what they eat. Practically in the same breath!

          Even if you do feel victimized by that (unjustly, in an uneducated way) as a poor person not on welfare, it still just makes no sense.

          • RBWells@lemmy.world
            15·
            10 months ago

            Listening to this I would have thought that was metaphor for the fat cats in Washington, honestly. Not literal.

    • dill@lemmy.one
      813·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • glockenspiel@kbin.social
        662·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • kite@lemmy.world
        26·
        10 months ago

        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.

            • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
              5·
              10 months ago

              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.

        • Aabbcc@lemm.ee
          4·
          10 months ago

          “the lyrics are amazing, just listen to them!”

          It’s got good wordplay and flow but the content is confused and under informed

      • Scooter411@lemmy.ml
        151·
        10 months ago

        The song title rich men north of Richmond is also likely a dog whistle for other crappy bigots like this idiot.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        10 months ago

        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.”

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
        92·
        10 months ago

        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.

        • EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world
          82·
          10 months ago

          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.

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      7·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • PP_GIRL_@lemmy.world
      1329·
      10 months ago

      Great comment, thanks for linking it. Unfortunately it seems like the sides have been “set” and we have to hate him now or we’re literally Nazis. Your phrase “wholesomely uneducated” seems a bit condescending but tbh I can’t think of a better way to phrase it. I met 100 of him when I lived in TN. Genuinely good people who were victims of misinformation and secularism social insularism.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
        151·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, I mean I wanted to be nice because he is passionate and something tells me his heart is in the right place, even if that lyric is misguided af.

        I talked about this a lot yesterday.

        I’ve watched a few of his non music videos to see if I sniff it out and I don’t catch a bad vibe from him beyond that lyric.

        I think the general issue with Conservatism as a modern ideology is that it only spreads through uneducated crowds. We can’t blame people for the bad education they got.

        He talks about the pure joy he’s getting out of people enjoying his content. He even deliberately tried to deliver a message of inclusivity to ward off the conservative crowd from making him their mascot.

        Getting overnight fame is hard and I hope he handles it well and in a way that enables him to share his talents for good.

        Edit: he seems genuine to me, idk.

        He didn’t say these things to a million people. He said it to his cell phone camera in his back yard. It wasn’t ironed out, nuanced, it was just kinda… Wholesomely uneducated.

        But the important thing is that overnight success is hard. The devil is tempting this kid left and right, no doubt. He is telling folks off for misappropriating his message, and saying no to big money.

        Hopefully this amount of public scrutiny cleans up his message and doesn’t dull his passion. It’s a delicate balance. Idk. It’s a good song, and I’m a northern liberal metal head who kinda hates country.

        • PP_GIRL_@lemmy.world
          113·
          10 months ago

          The fact that everyone ignore that “that line” is proceeded by a call for politicians to address the homelessness crisis and followed by lyrics about how workers are being exploited and lied to by rich southern coal mine owners should tell you all there is to know about the main message of the song.

          I genuinely feel sorry for him for releasing a song in criticism the state governments of the south and getting “picked up” specifically by those people whom he hates because of one stupid, naive lyric.

      • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
        132·
        10 months ago

        victims of misinformation and secularism.

        What’s a victim of secularism? How can you be a victim of not bringing religion into a discussion?

        • PP_GIRL_@lemmy.world
          131·
          10 months ago

          Whoops got my vocabulary wrong. Meant insularism. Southern culture specifically encourages social isolation and a toxic self-reliance attitude in men. It promotes an ideology of “everyone who isn’t like me is wrong” and “ill never ask for help or ask for someone to teach me a new thing” which, coupled with the most gutted public education in the country, pushes many right into the arms of the RNC who tell them exactly what they want to hear. I saw it happen to many of my childhood friends, family, and even myself for a short time.

        • foggy@lemmy.world
          21·
          10 months ago

          To play devil’s advocate

          A lot of DeSantis but jobs would probably believe deep in their souls that Disney is “victim of secularism”.

  • polymorphist_neuroid@lemmy.world
    2·
    10 months ago

    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.
  • PatFusty@lemm.ee
    54·
    10 months ago

    His statement doesnt make sense. He needs to own up to what he made.

  • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
    25·
    10 months ago

    Even if you give him full benefit of the doubt, the fact the right could adopt this as an anthem against his intentions shows how milquetoast the song is, and how he’s failed to communicate the meaning he wants the song to have.

      • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
        11·
        10 months ago

        Fortunate Son is definitely anti-war in context but I’d say it suffers the same vagueness, the lyrics are more about solidarity with soldiers and against preferential treatment for politician’s soldiers, which are moral causes often appealed to by the right. They’ve also had their own “complicated relationship” with displaying the confederate flag which also adds to this. Other anti-Vietnam war songs like “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” are a lot more radical anti-war sentiments, one reason why Fortunate Son is so ubiquitous is because it is vague enough and allows people to impart meaning on it just enough.

        Another interesting song that toes this line is “The Night They Drove Ol Dixie Down” which is a character piece of a confederate solder at the end of the civil war, with the chorus in major key it suggests an anti-war sentiment but people have also confused it for southern nostalgia.

        Should a song be direct or vague? If you want to communicate a specific message like Oliver Antony and get upset when it’s misinterpreted then yes, in CCR and The Band’s case it’s about expressing an emotion or painting a scene. However so many of the classic working class songs like “Which Side Are you On” cannot be misunderstood because they directly pose the political question. One of Dylan’s biggest criticisms from the left at the time was his vague lyrics, vs folk singers like Seeger and Ochs were directly addressing heavy political subjects in their lyrics.