The imperfect class consciousness of Rich Men North of Richmond

Dude with dobro and the conspiratorial conniption fit following his viral hit

Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” (lyrics at end of post) has caught lightning in a bottle and ignited a political firestorm. I’d initially started this essay as a short piece on the immediacy of acoustic music and the power of songs. This one hit me hard because it’s solid songwriting, coming from a real place and Anthony’s delivery is stunning. This is as authentic as music gets—and I felt like that’s something worth writing about.

I’d been sick in bed when I caught just a clip of the song going around Twitter on Friday afternoon, and watched the clip the same way you watch a cat video—not really that interested, but figured it might be amusing. Well, the clip blew me away and I wanted to hear the whole song which I initially found the RADIOWV YouTube channel and listened to the other artists featured there.

Soon I was weeping in bed with the dogs. Mountain folk music and bluegrass does this to me. My husband looked in to check on me and asks, “what’s wrong?” I say, “fuu-uucking blu-hooo-grass.”

I was overcome at that moment. It’s magical to me that people with nothing more than their voice and a stringed instrument make…that…connection. Who doesn’t love the feeling when a song catches you in the right place? It’s also thrilling to see a talented songwriter and performer get a break. His song is more than viral now, with millions of views.

Well, today I find that I’m a lone leftist who doesn’t think Oliver Anthony is cog in a conspiracy cooked up by a cabal of cigar-chomping rightwing media moguls. After checking out the nuttery on Twitter I’m feeling pretty good with that distinction.

But it’s also sad because “Rich Men North of Richmond” elicits feelings that ought to resonate with the left. It’s a lament about alienated labor which is straight-up Marx in case you didn’t know. You work all day, drive…drive…drive home, and drink until you pass out to do it the next day. That’s not living, and that was a primary issue Marx set his mind to.

• I've been selling my soul, working 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.

• It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to for people like me — for people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it not be true. But it is. Oh, it is.

• Living in the New World with an old soul. These rich men north of Richmond. Lord knows it all. Just want to have total control.

Anthony hits the nail on the head with these lines. It’s what caught my attention in the first place. These are the lines that are repeated, and that means they’re the ones you remember on the first few listens—it’s that way for me, at least.

Then, these are the lines that chapped everyone’s ass:

• I wish politicians would look out for miners and not just minors on an island somewhere. Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothing to eat, and the obese milking welfare.

• God, if you're five foot three, and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds. Young men are putting themselves 6 feet in the ground because all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.

This doesn’t appeal to my sensibilities, but the fact that I see this differently doesn’t drive me to attack the songwriter. Rather, it suggests the left has an existential vacuum where our class politics used to be.

Because of these lines many left Twitter critics have inverted the song’s meaning as if Anthony intends to have “has his boot on the neck of the downtrodden.” I don’t think that’s the case. This is an unfortunate verse that I’d not write. But to my ear, as someone who grew up on welfare…back when it existed, I actually hear someone tuned to the malicious intent of those who prey on poor people. I also think it’s what a lot working Americans think, because they’re sick and tired of going to work everyday, not having healthcare, not having vacation, not being able to afford rent and food, and being told that somehow this is paradise.

Anthony’s entire catalog is about being downtrodden, addicted, and barely scraping by. Check out “Ain’t Got a Dollar,” and “Rich Man’s Gold,” and maybe especially “Hell On Earth.” This is not someone who’s interested in having his boot on anyone’s neck.

So let’s talk about these lines:

• “…we got folks in the street, ain't got nothing to eat, and the obese milking welfare…if you're five foot three, and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds. Young men are putting themselves 6 feet in the ground because all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.”

These lyrics only get it partly wrong. Class and mental health are a driving forces in obesity, but the same powers north of Richmond that seek control of what we think/do, also have control of what we eat. SNAP benefits can be used for junk food because big processed food manufacturers have made damn sure that the government subsidizes the consumption of their products instead of healthy foods. It’s far more expensive to eat healthy than it is to eat junk and people are paid to keep it that way.

Honestly, I didn’t even hear the lines about the ‘obese’ until about the fourth time I listened to the song because I was too busy hearing the instrumentation and the artist’s vocals. I think that’s how a lot of people hear music. You can go forever without registering the actual words of a song. My ex, a working musician, thought that Sweet Home Alabama lyrics said “now, whether you’re gay doesn’t bother me,” instead of “now, Watergate does not bother me. Does your conscience bother you?”

Many on the left only heard the stuff about welfare and obesity and skipped the larger message about alienated labor. I know a lot of Twitter peeps on the left who think the songwriter a fascist, white nationalist, racist—building from the conspiracy theory that the whole thing was engineered by rightwing media because a couple of rightwing social media accounts shared the song.

Sweet mother of god, it’s hard enough to break out in music without also having to police who shares your song. You want everyone to share your song and take meaning from it. If you’re writing for one tribe or another then you’re not really crafting songs—you’re making propaganda.

Anthony actually did a video explaining that he’s neither fish nor fowl when it comes to politics. He says that both Democrats and Republicans are corrupt, and no honest person would disagree with that. Unfortunately, that isn’t making a dent in the conspiracy discourse because apparently there’s a popular country artist (with full label and legal representation) whose current song says that BLM wouldn’t go over in a “small town.” Well, okay. That sucks. But if you’re whatabouting an unknown artist to one with the full force of the music industry behind him…well, maybe you’re blind to class.

If I learned anything this week, it’s that the left is keenly aware of country music and every posting of every rightwing influencer you’ve never heard of.

To provide another example of our collective lunacy, one popular author and critic of religion in the US said that the song is clearly racist because ‘Richmond’ is supposedly a dogwhistle for the Civil War. On this Occam’s Razor would like a word. The songwriter lives in Farmville Virginia, just west of Richmond. Might it be…just spitballing here…that the line refers to a place on a map? Perhaps a person from Farmville would consider Richmond the dividing line between us in the US and them in Northern Virginia and Washington DC?

For all I know he *could* be referencing the Civil War—the same way there *could* be Satanic backward masking encouraging me to write this essay.

What I see in this miasma of bad takes is contempt for the actual working class by people who share SEIU messaging all day and claim to have solidarity with workers. Maybe some of those who got rich off of podcasting have never met actual workers. Seems like most of them went straight from elite schools to selling the ‘dirtbag’ political aesthetic which has become indistinguishable from any pablum you’d find on Daily Kos circa 2017.

I’m reminded of how Lou Reed sang, “I wanna be black…I don't wanna be a fucked up, middle class, college student anymore.” If you’re a white kid living in Ohio or Texas and despair of being confused with “one of them,” (cultural conservatives) then your political aesthetics might be all you have.

The liberal left has a well known problem with poor white people—rural folks specifically—those who’re currently dying “deaths of despair.” They’re trivialized and vilified as “Trumpers.” If you’re of the tribe that thinks of Trump when you hear that song, maybe it’s a sign that the left has nothing to say to poor people in general and poor white people, specifically.

The rest of us recognize a dirge when we hear one. Sad songs make us feel less alone. Folk and bluegrass come from pain, not university degrees.

It’s sad that so many that can’t hear music without putting it through a political filter (that includes both sides). I love when an artist reflects my values or pulls a thread that’s important to me. But if every bit of culture had to align to my personal political blueprint then I’d be listening to the same 10 songs for the rest of my life—and I’m not even sure about them.

Think of all the misogynist lyrics in rap and hiphop. No one sees the objectification of women as a problem—so maybe just think of all the capitalist-consumerist messaging in pop music, instead. No one demands purity or political virtue from those artists. And that is precisely how music is naturally consumed. You hear a line that clashes with your values and you either skip the song or ignore the lyric. But hey, maybe it’s a conspiracy that these artists push capitalism, misogyny and grotesque consumerism to their audiences? Maybe all music is a conspiracy?

I can extend forbearance to Anthony on the couple of lines that offend my sensibilities. I’d do the same for any other song I like with a politically incorrect lyric or two.

So, “MILKING WELFARE”

We’ve come to the educational portion of our program, ahem: Welfare exists only for the rich in the US. There’s no safety net or social “welfare” in this country. There’s disability which is next to impossible to get, and I can’t imagine that anyone can pay rent on SSI (Supplemental Security Income) which tops out at $941 a month for an individual and $1371 for a couple (yeah, there’s a perverse incentive to divorce built into the system).

Compare that to the $7.2 BILLION that the government has given to Exxon-Mobil since 2010.

Bill Clinton gutted the welfare system when he threw it to the states, funded by block grants. Only about 1/4 of those block grants find their way to needy families, and TANF benefits (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) come with harsh work requirements and arbitrary time limits.

“Food Stamps” became SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program). Your food allotment is about $180/month and it’s limited to three months for most people. Young mothers can sometimes get WIC (Women Infants Children) benefits which provide only a few extremely basic goods.

Once and for all, WE DO NOT HAVE WELFARE IN THIS COUNTRY.

This goes to the heart of what his song is about. He clearly has ‘welfare’ wrong, but you know, it’s a song, not a campaign stump speech. Life is shit right now for everyone except billionaires. It’s shit for workers. It’s shit for students and new graduates. It’s shit for PMCs, but at least ya’ll are working from home. It’s shit for people who got sick and it’s shit for those like me who were injured by the vaccine that was supposed to save the world. It’s shit for kids who missed two years of school. It’s shit for small business owners who lost everything since 2020. It’s shit for everyone renting since Blackrock cornered the market on residential housing.

Life is shit because we live in a country that consumes us as fuel. We’re the commodity. We’re the livestock. We’re the resource that’s farmed, bought and sold. Our chronic disease makes people very rich and they have no incentive to “cure” anyone because the sicker we are, the more powerful they become. It’s zero-sum.

This is the nature of US greed that leads to the sort of misery that people are feeling right now, and what I see in a song such as this is recognition of that suffering.

• Because your dollar ain't shit, and it's taxed to no end because the rich men north of Richmond.

Working people complain about taxes in the same context as “welfare” because they don’t see that the system doesn’t work for them. The culprit isn’t the obese, addicts, and those dying deaths of despair, and I don’t think that’s where Anthony puts the blame. If we did actually get something from our taxes—other than war—we might actually have healthcare, mental health, better nutrition, better schools, and mass transit. We know it’s possible because we see other countries getting much more for their work and taxes. Europeans get free healthcare, a MONTH of vacation every year, generous family and maternity leave, amazing mass transit systems that encourage walking from your stop to your destination, thereby reducing obesity. European countries spend a tiny fraction of their taxes on warfare compared to the US. None of this is fair to us and we’re right to be furious about it. Why does everyone else have clean, beautiful urban landscapes with safe neighborhoods while we get drug cartels running open-air fentanyl markets that are killing everyone in our formerly “world class” cities?

I don’t know, maybe ask those rich men north of Richmond.

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LYRICS

I've been selling my soul, working 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.

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to for people like me — for people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it not be true. But it is. Oh, it is.

Living in the New World with an old soul. These rich men north of Richmond. Lord knows it all. Just want to have total control.

Want to know what you think, want to know what you do. And they don't think you know. But I know that you do. Because your dollar ain't shit, and it's taxed to no end because the rich men north of Richmond.

I wish politicians would look out for miners and not just minors on an island somewhere. Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothing to eat, and the obese milking welfare.

God, if you're five foot three, and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds. Young men are putting themselves 6 feet in the ground because all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to for people like me — people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it not be true. But it is. Oh, it is.

Living in the New World with an old soul. These rich men north of Richmond. Lord knows they all. Just want to have total control.

Want to know what you think, want to know what you do. And they don't think you know. But I know that you do because your dollar ain't shit, and it's taxed to no end because the rich men north of Richmond.

I've been selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay...

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