Consider that this song was 'dropped" on the Internet on August 8. A week later, it was the number one song in the country. Just just for country music but across all genres. That includes the slickly produced music of established mainstream artists such as Taylor Swift. Oliver Anthony's (Christopher Lunsford) self-produced, self-written song pushed all of that aside to claim the number one slot in the country in just days.
This kind of achievement was unthinkable up until recently. It used to be that you needed a recording contract with a major label to even get on the national radar and even then, it usually took years of promotion and endless small venue gigs to build enough of an audience to even get the attention of the record labels.
This allowed the record labels to hand select who THEY wanted to turn into superstars. This is mainly why so much of today's music is lame and uninspiring.
No major label would have signed Oliver Anthony on the basis of that song. Even if they thought he'd have appeal to a country audience, they'd sanitize his lyrics, clean him up, and have him perform Randy Travis covers or something like that.
But with today's technology, somebody like Oliver Anthony can record an acoustic song like this in his own backyard, upload it to the social media platforms, and watch it explode to be the number one song in the country within days.
In fact, looking at the iTunes Top 100 Country chart this morning, Oliver Anthony has the top three songs in the country right now, five songs in the Top 10, and 19 songs in the Top 100.
Also at #5 in the country chart is the song that the Left was hating on just a few weeks ago - "Try That In A Small Town" by Jason ALdean.
The entire music industry must be shell-shocked.
Excellent post. I’ve forwarded it to a few of my muscian friends.