Billy Bragg posts answer song to Rich Men North of Richmond.

August 21, 2023 6:28 AM

This link takes you to today's Guardian story about Bragg's new song. And here's the song itself.

For more on country music's culture wars, don't miss this Previously.

posted by Paul Slade (67 comments total)

God bless Billy Bragg.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:44 AM on August 21, 2023 [30 favorites]

And that is how you do an actual protest song.
posted by teleri025 at 7:25 AM on August 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

He's such a mensch.

For more background, Citations Needed just did a great mini-episode on the most recent "controversial" country hits: Attack of the Salt of the Earth Republican Country Music Stars
posted by windbox at 7:36 AM on August 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

More context from the BBC, and I will sum up a bit as well:

This is Billy Bragg's response to the song "Rich Men North of Richmond", a song by a guy named Oliver Anthony that's been going viral. People on the right have been flocking to adopt it because it's in the voice of "the common man" and at some point it casts dispersion on "the obese milkin' welfare". Anthony himself, however, has been playing coy, and saying he "sits dead center" when it comes to politics.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:46 AM on August 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

TFW the Overton window has been shifted far enough that someone who literally sings about 'the obese milkin' welfare' thinks he's a centrist.

(Bob Dylan also wrote a response song about 'Rich Men of Richmond.')
posted by box at 8:10 AM on August 21, 2023 [23 favorites]

All reactionaries think they're normal and everyone else is the problem.
posted by Reyturner at 8:35 AM on August 21, 2023 [10 favorites]

So I Googled the lyrics to the original song out of curiosity

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.

Pre-Chorus:
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to / For people like me and people like you / Wish I could just wake up and it not be true / But it is, oh, it is.

Chorus:
Livin' in the new world / With an old soul / These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control / Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do / And they don't think you know, but I know that you do / 'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end / 'Cause of 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 nothin' to eat / And the obese milkin' welfare.

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds / Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground / 'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down.

Repeat Pre-Chorus

Repeat Chorus

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay

Thoughts that came to mind:

He spends a LOT of real estate on fat shaming

Does he think coal miners are getting neglected in favor of trafficked minors? Probably not, he just failed to resolve his miners/minors attempt at cleverness

There are plenty of rich men in Richmond and south of it who are part of the problem, but it's always fun to blame Yankees for the South's problems

The rest is sort of vaguely aggrieved filler.
posted by emjaybee at 8:45 AM on August 21, 2023 [13 favorites]

Of all the thinkpieces about the Anthony song I've read, these two are my favorites.
posted by box at 9:02 AM on August 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's not just the cracks about obesity or welfare, dude is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist too:

The most revealing window into Anthony’s worldview may be a YouTube playlist he curated, “Videos that make your noggin get bigger.” The list includes performances from Luciano Pavarotti and Hank Williams Sr., but it also features several talking heads popular among the far right — Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan — as well as multiple clips putting forward the conspiracy theory that Jews were responsible for 9/11.

posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 9:12 AM on August 21, 2023 [17 favorites]

The line that jumps out at me from Anthony's lyric is "people like you and people like me". Doesn't take a decoder ring to figure that one out, does it?
posted by Paul Slade at 9:17 AM on August 21, 2023 [18 favorites]

Jamelle Bouie - The Irony in the ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’
posted by Artw at 9:24 AM on August 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's not just the cracks about obesity or welfare, dude is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist too:

Time moves quickly--last week I saw at least two laudatory notes on this song from liberal writers in major newspapers, which makes this a pretty classic milkshake duck scenario. (I can't find the two pieces I was thinking of, mainly because there are just so many hits on Google for this song and its embrace by the right wing now.)
posted by kensington314 at 9:43 AM on August 21, 2023

The fools socialism strikes again.
posted by Artw at 9:44 AM on August 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

Man, I thought the child tax credit advance payments were nice, but were some of you getting fudge rounds too?
posted by mittens at 9:46 AM on August 21, 2023 [12 favorites]

Billy Bragg's response, as expected, finds solidarity with, compassion for, all The Others who are worse off than people like me and people like you . . . rather than shouting at them. Joining a union is one step in the journey, but does it have to be so dismal? Grace Petrie is about Oliver Anthony's age and funny in her indignation - e.g. 'A Revolutionary in the Wrong Time'. First make The Man ridiculous, then the revolution!
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:46 AM on August 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

The fools socialism strikes again.

It's not even socialism. Unless you mean the National type, of course
posted by hangashore at 9:51 AM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thank goodness for Billy Bragg. Thanks to the Guardian for writing about it, but every single quote they included from the song had mistakes in it.
posted by snofoam at 9:52 AM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

There is the presumption in America that people who are rich or poor got there because they deserved it. It isn’t true but it’s deeply embedded as cultural myth. This we are more worried about how some poor and therefore “undeserving” person might have stolen a nickel instead of the thousands stolen by wage theft price gouging, and tax cheating of the rich.

Rich men north of Richmond is a symptom. I’m really weary of this fight.
posted by interogative mood at 9:53 AM on August 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

I mean, I’m particularly paranoid about this, but it doesn’t take too much of a leap from me to hear “rich men north of Richmond” as a euphemism for “the Jews”.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:10 AM on August 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

America became a paradise for the rich not because of opportunity and freedom, as we're taught, but because it was constructed from the beginning on principles that allow us to blame ourselves, each other, and/or racial minorities for anything that goes wrong.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:17 AM on August 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I mean, I’m particularly paranoid about this, but it doesn’t take too much of a leap from me to hear “rich men north of Richmond” as a euphemism for “the Jews”.

I don’t think it’s really a leap at all. Even if it wasn’t directly that it’d be something that inhabits the same ideological bogeyman slot.
posted by Artw at 10:18 AM on August 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

billy bragg did well here, but i fear that melody is getting real worn out - it was already struggling when anthony was droning it
posted by pyramid termite at 10:24 AM on August 21, 2023

I think this is discussed in one of the links box cited, but the thing I keep coming back to about this song is that it's utter pablum. I mean, Merle Haggard had a whole category of songs with right wing undertones--or overtones--and while it is not always so clear if he was playing a character or doing satire or what his actual views were, the underlying songs were good. He never forced "fudge rounds" or any similarly baffling string of syllables into "Okie from Muskogee" or whatever.
posted by kensington314 at 10:26 AM on August 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

Thanks to the Guardian for writing about it, but every single quote they included from the song had mistakes in it.

Not to derail the thread, but its pretty clear The Guardian is operating on a shoestring these days, and that proper copy-editing has been one of the casualties of that.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:28 AM on August 21, 2023

Also I can't quite put the right words to this, but something that bothers me about the song is that a lot of its appeal seems to come from this kind of childish yelping that the guy is doing. The think pieces about this song include lots of hand-wringing over what "authenticity" means, but I'd say maybe at the core of the song is a vocal delivery that is most authentic to the victimization fetish fanbase that has rallied around the song. Just one more sad puppy yowling across the chasm in the culture war.
posted by kensington314 at 10:35 AM on August 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

He never forced "fudge rounds" or any similarly baffling string of syllables into "Okie from Muskogee" or whatever.

I also was not familiar with "fudge rounds", but apparently they are a Little Debbie product?
posted by gurple at 10:35 AM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I also was not familiar with "fudge rounds", but apparently they are a Little Debbie product?

They sure are! But I just mean there's something about the way these syllables work together in a sung line that just makes them kind of inherently hard to hear or interpret, to me. Just awkward song-writing. But maybe I'm just being a little too nitpicky about lyrics now.

No, fuck it, let's go all in: The line is, "Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds." Its entire purpose is to rhyme with "300 pounds," as in the welfare shaming and fat shaming part of the song. But also, "taxes ought not to pay for . . . " Good sir, whomst doth spake such lines in the moderne epoch?
posted by kensington314 at 10:40 AM on August 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

But also, "taxes ought not to pay for . . . " Good sir, whomst doth spake such lines in the moderne epoch?

100% agree, but I wonder if "ought not to" is an aggressively folksy way of putting it? A grammatical shibboleth?
posted by gurple at 10:42 AM on August 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I keep wanting to believe that this guy is doing a Wag the Dog because his lyrics are so clumsy and foolish while also being of perfect use to the GOP. He seems like somebody I would have come up with if I had total contempt for the American public (instead of just select blocs). And yet I should give him the credit for being terrible all on his own.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:43 AM on August 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

100% agree, but I wonder if "ought not to" is an aggressively folksy way of putting it? A grammatical shibboleth?

I'm sure it is! What a terrible way to write a song!
posted by kensington314 at 10:44 AM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

More interesting than the song, I think, is what's happening to Oliver Anthony (nee Christopher Anthony Lunsford).

He's not an industry plant, he's something more modern--a guy with some admitted mental health issues who's been radicalized, and now is himself being amplified by, the right-wing outrage machine.

He'll spend the rest of his life simultaneously getting wingnut welfare and working with people like Dan Bongino and Draven Riffe who are bigger grifters than he is.

Oliver Anthony is Kyle Rittenhouse with a Gretsch Bobtail.
posted by box at 10:47 AM on August 21, 2023 [12 favorites]

Kyle Rittenhouse is a school shooter with a job, so slightly worse.
posted by Artw at 11:00 AM on August 21, 2023

I mean, I’m particularly paranoid about this, but it doesn’t take too much of a leap from me to hear “rich men north of Richmond” as a euphemism for “the Jews”.

I 1000% assumed this. Not just because of "The West Wing" but because I've spent most of my life south of Richmond, and no matter whether they're rich or poor, the racist shitheels almost always intend "rich yankees" to be an anti-semitic dog whistle. Even especially when they are using in front of rich people from the north they do find acceptable (usually because they are super Christian, or super-aspirational or super-inclined to side with them in school board meetings or whatever).

This is kind of irrelevant, I guess, but Farmville, VA (Anthony's adopted home)is a weird town. I've spent more time there than strictly necessary, owing to nearby family and my time at a fancy women's college about 100 miles west on US 460 . Farmville is home to a fancy men's college that was, in the 1990s, where you spent your weekends if you wantedto hang out with the disappointing sons of rich men from (mostly) south of Richmond and go snort cocaine off the hood of their BMWs on a Civil War battlefield. It is also home to a small state university where I saw the Ramones play a free concert (with bonus free pizza).
posted by thivaia at 11:10 AM on August 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

hang out with the disappointing sons of rich men from (mostly) south of Richmond and go snort cocaine off the hood of their BMWs on a Civil War battlefield

Now there's a country song I'd enjoy listening to.
posted by box at 11:13 AM on August 21, 2023 [16 favorites]

billy bragg did well here, but i fear that melody is getting real worn out - it was already struggling when anthony was droning it

Agreed. Here's a country music palate cleanser if you just wanna dance with somebody.


Or if you want to keep on fighting, we'll lose some battles but will damn sure win
the last one.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:19 PM on August 21, 2023

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

And these are the same characters who pitched a screaming shitfit when Michelle Obama was promoting healthy eating and regular exercise. But of course that was another case of someone who was very different from "people like me and people like you."
posted by hangashore at 12:24 PM on August 21, 2023 [10 favorites]

I mean, I’m particularly paranoid about this, but it doesn’t take too much of a leap from me to hear “rich men north of Richmond” as a euphemism for “the Jews”.

It's about as veiled as Kid Rock shooting up a case of Bud Light. Pretty much all there is to right wing talking points nowadays is dogwhistles and incitements to violence
posted by treepour at 12:58 PM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

That opinion piece at The Spectator that box posted includes the baffling line “Anthony is such an obvious progressive villain: a Southern hick strumming tunes about the left-behind boonies on a resonator guitar”. Is the commentator that ignorant of actual progressive beliefs, such as the whole economic justice part that is pretty integral to progressivism? (Answer: yeah probably, plus the straw man caricature probably sells better for him.)
posted by eviemath at 1:14 PM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s genuinely a surprise when one of these people turns out not to be from a well-to-do family from some northern state when they turn up the “hick” thing.
posted by Artw at 2:25 PM on August 21, 2023

Just to be clear, this Oliver Anthony guy is absolutely an industry plant.

His chart success is coming from iTunes sales, not radio play or organic streaming growth. This thread by Jamie Brooks goes into it somewhat. For more reading, so does this one. And another that lays out some of the strategy, here.

Like Jamie says, Luke Combs' cover of "Fast Car" is an example of a genuine, nationwide, crossover hit, whereas "Rich Men" is about as blatant of an industry plant as you can find.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 2:26 PM on August 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

I bet his ex-factory worker, dropout biography will turn out to be BS. Quick google searching certainly makes me suspicious.
posted by interogative mood at 2:29 PM on August 21, 2023

I heard the original song for the first time today, made it about as far in as most of you before smelling total populist horseshit. Came to MeFi knowing it would have been diced up, found Billy Bragg doing the chopping.

And the world seemed okay for a bit.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:56 PM on August 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

If he’s an industry plant, I don’t think it’s the music industry—not because they don’t do that, but because he’d have better songs.

Are there dark-money political groups that would cynically throw money at iTunes downloads the same way they do book sales? Absolutely. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Bongino, Jasón Howerton, and others were helping to orchestrate that.

Are there 150,000 people that would spend a couple bucks to chase the feeling of owning the libs? There are that many and then some.
posted by box at 4:58 PM on August 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

Every time I read some lyrics of that song I try and fail to make the meter work. I’m not clicking that shit so I guess I’ll never know if I got close.

At this point I write off anyone who says something as dumb as “human trafficking is normalized” as a QAnoner and jog on.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 7:14 PM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I dunno, maybe I should actually listen to the song to make a truly informed opinion but I have a general rule that I don’t listen to songs that valorize the former capital of the Confederacy. Like, that’s a really fucking odd choice of geographic location for someone who claims to be “straight down the center”.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:01 PM on August 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

I might have to work up a response song that stars with a Beach Boys' "Fudge Round, get a Rround, I get a Round"
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:36 PM on August 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

As someone who worked in the philanthropic sector of Richmond once upon a time, there are plenty of rich white men running around there with no real interest in addressing the systemic issues of poverty that exist in all the colors of people. They are still getting rich from the exploitation of large groups of people. That song made me chuckle, He does have a great singing voice but o lordy what a bunch of crap.
posted by tarantula at 4:13 AM on August 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh Christ, whenever somebody tells an American to join a union... Union formation is hard and 99 percent of the time doesn't stick under DEMOCRAT leadership, which is nominally the most labor friendly. If you're in a Republican state, you're fucked completely. It's not like you just can walk in, get the card, and enjoy a better quality of life and the only reason it's not happening is the inherent evil of the cracker soul.

Not saying it's not worth doing but as a pop culture anthem it's little like Paris Hilton telling people to stop being poor.
posted by kingdead at 5:40 AM on August 22, 2023

It's not like you just can walk in, get the card, and enjoy a better quality of life and the only reason it's not happening is the inherent evil of the cracker soul.

If you look at the comments on Billy Bragg's video, though, there are an awful lot of "I'll never join a union because I have pride in my work" and "unions fuck people over" and "Unions are socialism".

I don't think this is so much a call to "join a union because it will fix everything" as much as it's a reminder that "maybe the people trying to turn us against each other are the real enemies".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:57 AM on August 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

If unions weren't an instrument in class liberation, capitalists wouldn't do everything they could to stop them all the time.

Saying "join a union" might seem glib, but it is the most immediate, consequential thing an oppressed worker can do. And gaining enough class consciousness among you and your co-workers to build up that idea is going to be absolutely vital to the future, both on the individual and collective level.

So, yeah, it's a lot, but what else is there?
posted by Lord Chancellor at 6:11 AM on August 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

This is your periodic reminder that unions are much broader than just government-recognized bargaining units. See: most of the IWW, the Naujawan Support Network, Union of Southern Service Workers, the Fight for $15 campaign, tenants unions, Parkdale Organize, etc.
posted by eviemath at 6:18 AM on August 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I might have to work up a response song that stars with a Beach Boys' "Fudge Round, get a Rround, I get a Round"

I keep thinking that "Rich Men North of Richmond" goes to the tune of "Ferry 'Cross the Mersey" and I prefer this.

Just now, I thought "Metafilter: the inherent evil of the cracker soul" would be pretty funny, but then it felt too close to the bone. As a Southerner, I am struggling every day with the fear that whatever happened to us 400 years ago when our Scots-Irish ancestors straggled over and accepted the devil's bargain of the new country may destroy us all yet.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:33 AM on August 22, 2023

a response song that stars with a Beach Boys' "Fudge Round, get a Rround, I get a Round"

That doesn't exist, but The Melvins did do a version of that song called I Fuck Around.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:09 AM on August 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Tyler Childers did it better and also doesn't make fun of snack cakes.

Plenty of people doing fantastic folk/bluegrass/Americana in Appalachia that don't have their heads in the sand. How come they don't have $150k sales on iTunes?

I feel like some of the people in this thread are dissecting the song a little too carefully just based on how it's being presented to you - plenty of very popular schlock on the radio and always has been, but at the same time it is disheartening to see something being shoved towards popularity when it's just so easy to poke holes in the message with a little bit of education.

But yeah, DC/Yankees are responsible for all your problems. Maybe ought you not to have some self control at the ballot box and don't stuff so many R's in your vote-hole.

(Disclaimer because for some reason I've seen a lot of people miss this sort of nuance on Metafilter recently: those last two lines are sarcasm, and are not meant to be read seriously. They are the same sort of victim blaming Oliver is engaging in that's being decried above.)
posted by jellywerker at 3:59 AM on August 23, 2023

Better "common man" songs, off the top of my head:

Let's Kill Saturday Night by Robbie Fulks
This Fucking Job by Drive-By Truckers
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:59 AM on August 23, 2023

"I'm not really political. I'm more of a centrist."

But also:

"So proud to have my song on the RNC debate!"
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:15 AM on August 24, 2023

Metafilter: the inherent evil of the cracker soul

I was going to make a joke about Ritz crackers and then remembered that my great uncle, the man who used to wear his "Mississippi Cracker" t-shirt with his patched Madras pants to the municipal golf course, ended up diagnosed with celiac disease, which maybe counts as the joke.
posted by thivaia at 8:39 AM on August 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

tbh I would wear that shirt if it didn't look too crypto-fascist
posted by Countess Elena at 10:05 AM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

But also (on Fox and Friends):

"I mean, we are the melting pot of the world, and that’s what makes us strong is our diversity."
posted by box at 10:11 AM on August 25, 2023

Billy Bragg is the best. I interviewed him and he was so kind and casual and polite.
posted by mermaidcafe at 11:33 AM on August 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sawyer Hackett: Rich men North of Richmond singer says “it’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me like I’m one of them.”

He says it’s funny they used it in the GOP debate because “I wrote that song about them.”

Some on Twitter are calling this a "reverse milkshake duck."
posted by Apocryphon at 1:59 PM on August 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Anthony seems attempting to do damage control, and nobody's really buying it. The deplorables are mad that he's not deplorable enough. The rest of us aren't buying his anemic half baked South Park politics. I think he's just not the clever songwriter he thought he was.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:00 PM on August 26, 2023

Not willing just yet to say he's just doing damage control, without additional info, interviews, etc unfolding.

This made me chuckle, it's a sentiment I appreciate: "There’s nothing special about me. I’m not a good musician, I’m not a very good person."

https://www.stereogum.com/2233996/viral-country-singer-oliver-anthony-pisses-off-racists-with-first-interview-since-topping-hot-100/news/

If you read more of what he's said, while it's true that he wouldn't quite fit in MeTa land, he sounds not like a lost cause. In organizing terms we'd call him a 3, where Jason Aldean is a 5 and Bill Bragg is a 1. It's good to think in organizing terms.
posted by kensington314 at 1:07 PM on August 28, 2023

The one thing I will say scores extremely well in Anthony's favor is his recognition that he is not a bold new artist who needs a record deal and a tour and a huge media presence. He is some guy who wrote a song that is having a moment. He seems to be content to enjoy the short term windfall without trying to be something he's not.

It's still a shit song, but that is a solid way to look at the situation.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:16 PM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

“Why Can't We Shut Up And Listen To The Anguished Cries Of The Fiscally Liberal, Socially Conservative White Man?” Robyn Pennacchia, The Wonkette, 29 August 2023

No, The Atlantic. Just no.

posted by ob1quixote at 12:56 PM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Todd in the Shadows: POP SONG REVIEW: "Rich Men North of Richmond" by Oliver Anthony Music
posted by Pendragon at 11:05 AM on September 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oliver Anthony cancels scheduled show.

Because he thought the tickets were too expensive.
posted by box at 11:27 AM on September 15, 2023 [1 favorite]