TLDR; Get Oliver Anthony’s album, “Hymnal of a Troubled Man’s Mind”, direct from his website olveranthonymusic.com
I stopped listening to country music sometime in the late 1980s. Too much pop music was infiltrating the genre, and I wasn’t interested in fake country songs.
When I was younger, I listened to a lot of Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Merle Haggard, George Strait, Charlie Rich, and even a little Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Sprinkle in some Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and a few other women I can’t recall at the moment. Back then, country music seemed grounded and reflected life happening outside our major cities.
When Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and others of their era were big in the 1990s, country music became homogenized and “popified.” The music started losing its soul. Then came the 2000s and the rise of Taylor Swift. Her sound was definitely pop from the start. Sixteen years old, a pretty blonde singing with a mild twang, and someone on a slide guitar suddenly became the heart of country music. It wasn’t.
That was the death of country music for two decades.
Enter Oliver Anthony (His real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford). In 2023, he went viral with “Rich Men from Richmond.” If you haven’t heard it, go and listen to it now.
Anthony’s music is REAL country music. It’s not just the sound, it’s not just the instrument he plays, and it’s not just his style of singing. This is where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s the entire package and, in particular, the lyrics and the soul he puts into belting out his tunes. You feel every single thing he’s singing about. He’s singing of a life experienced in places outside of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and even the Mecca of Country Music… Nashville. I think the “Nashville Sound” is as far from country music as you can get these days, with hip hop further eroding the genre.
On March 31, 2024, Anthony released a full album, Hymnal of a Troubled Man’s Mind. I missed it since his album was self-released and didn’t get any media attention. Song after song on this album is an emotional taffy pull. He’s singing about the entire mood of the United States post-pandemic. He doesn’t like to get political, but if you listen to this album, you can hear why Trump won and why legacy media is dying. The political and media classes are out of touch with the lives that guys like Oliver Anthony have been living. There’s way more to his music than the song that made him famous; heck, “Rich Men from Richmond” isn’t even on this album.
Give this entire album a listen, then go buy it. Even if you don’t like country music, I think you’ll feel the heart-wrenching soul of a forgotten America. I put together the playlist below from that album that includes only the songs and omits the religious interludes.
This album didn’t chart. The Country Music Industry largely ignored him, and, as far as I can tell, Country Music Radio ignored him too. Anthony has stated in videos that he has made enough money from touring in the past year to never work another day in his life—which is a good thing because the country music powers that be don’t want him to succeed on his own terms. They want to own him.
I’m hoping somehow this album and his music infect the Country Music Industry because they’re in need of a revival. They’ve lost touch completely and are as much a part of the political and media class as any other mass media product.
If what Anthony says on his personal bio on his website is true, he’s holding to his principles and not selling out to the people who want to bleed his talent dry. Read it. I think his is a story more common than we would like to know.
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