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An interesting take on Oliver Anthony.

Certainly he lacks any semblance of studio polish as he's basically been recording acoustic songs out in his front yard and posting them to the Internet.

Does remind me of the early Bob Dylan, before he went electric and started touring with a full scale rock band. Dylan's earliest songs were very stark and stripped down, mostly based on old folk songs. Instead of his front yard, Dylan sang in tiny coffeehouses in Greenwich Village and in people's living rooms. Some may argue that Dylan's voice never improved since those early days, but I digress.

Oliver Anthony does not seem to be going down as a one-hit wonder. As of right now, he has placed twenty songs in the iTunes Top 100 Country chart. He is basically occupying one fifth of the entire chart, displacing established country artists like Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, and Chris Stapleton. That's not even including the new song he dropped yesterday "I Want To Go Home."

If it was just the one song, "Rich Men North of Richmond", he could more easily be dismissed as one who just got lucky with the right song at the right time.

Now maybe by the time the autumn leaves fall, this whole phenomenon evaporates into thin air and Oliver Anthony becomes nothing more than a trivia question.

I think he has staying power, especially if he gets into a studio and puts some polish on his works, but time will tell.

Let me state up-front, that I have zero country records in my collection. Unless you count Johnny Cash’s last album. Thus, Anthony had a step hill to climb for my thumbs up (and for the record, he could probably care less about my thumb. And rightly so).

While I actively avoid country music, I’m totally comfortable with un-electrified music. A guy or a gal with a guitar or piano and singing, that can work with me. Ironically, I have the XM bluegrass channel on my favorites.

Basically, Anthony’s song makes me go “well…ok…” I find the tune to be rather so-so, I think the lyrics are crafted and refined to obtain maximum conservative triggering and not really heartfelt (though I love the message), and the video seems so affected.

Now, I heard Anthony’s back story and it think he’s sincere. So it’s not about the man, and I really hope he fires his management.

In situations like this, I move things around: if his lyrics were all MSNBC-like, I’d outright hate the song. That clinches it for me. Instead of this being Socialist Realism, it’s Deplorable Realism.

I really WANT to like the song. I simply would rather listen to a zillion other things. But I’ll take the cultural Win.