Songs of the Right-Wing Summer?
It’s a little unfair to compare.
Over the past two weeks, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” — Oliver Anthony’s plaintive howls of rural, blue-collar frustration — has gone from dominating online discussion to the top of the charts. Buoyed by a video of the Farmville, Va. farmer crooning in the Appalachian backwoods, the song started this week at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Here’s the video, if you haven’t seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
During the song’s ascent, amateur music critics and political observers have made a connection between “Rich Men North of Richmond” and “Try That In a Small Town,” the Jason Aldean ditty that stormed up the charts after Country Music Television (CMT) banned its video. (Did you know CMT still plays music videos?)
The comparison is a little unfair.
If you listened to it, you know that Aldean’s song opens with a warning to violent criminals. It quickly devolves into non-sequitur criticisms of flag burners and anti-gun activists. Eventually, it’s just a sneering warning, repeated over and over: “Try that in a small town!” The lightweight lyrics allow the video to help establish the song’s meaning… and my goodness, the video is something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY
Like the song, the video was clearly produced for broader consumption. It’s slick and professional: Aldean and his band sing through smoke machines and lens flares, intercut with heavy imagery of Black Lives Matter (and possibly other) protests. The use of these images, plus the lyrical references to “good old boys” holding the line to maintain peace, makes it very reasonable to apply the song’s message along racial lines. Aldean claims that wasn’t his intention, which is probably true, but there’s not much to point the listener’s imagination elsewhere.
If you like country songs with a story, “Small Town,” will leave you disappointed. To the extent one exists, it boils down to this: Residents in insular communities will defend their way of life from outsiders who act in unacceptable ways. That’s the type of plot summary where the “good guys” and “bad guys” aren’t necessarily obvious. Maybe Aldean tried to give voice to the sense of community and togetherness in rural America; if so, he failed. The small town he sings about sounds less like Mayberry, USA and more like Money, Miss.
Helped by the controversy, “Small Town” shot up the country charts before yielding chart position and online chatter to Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
As “Rich Men” started to go viral, Variety, Rolling Stone, the A.V. Club, and other outlets couldn’t help but look for parallels with “Small Town.” Many tried to lump the songs’ respective politics into the same pile. The New York Daily News wrote that Anthony was “taking the right-wing spotlight away from” Aldean.
This shallow reading glosses over key differences between the songs.
To start, “Rich Men North of Richmond” is a better song sung better. The tune is catchy, helped by the tinny, stripped-down steel guitar sound. Anthony’s unique voice — scratchy, plaintive, and sad — fits the song perfectly. The video is simple, with Anthony singing in the woods. It looks like something that could have been cut using baseline Windows video editing software included for free with a cheap Dell.
The politics of the song, are all over the place. Anthony complains about taxes and overreaching government, but also about “folks in the street [who] ain’t got nothing to eat” and calls for leaders to “look out for miners.” (Incidentally, that line — “I wish politicians would look out for miners / instead of minors on an island somewhere” — is one of several spots where Anthony’s wordplay gets a little overwrought and tries to be too clever.) National Review’s Mark Antonia Wright drew fire online for rebuking Anthony’s negativity, and he has a point.
But if you ignore the politics, don’t overthink, and accept it for what it is… Anthony’s put together a pretty good song. When he practically howls his words into the Appalachian forest, you hear genuine hopelessness at the state of the world — and more importantly, the everyday life of him and his friends.
The honesty of Anthony’s lyrics and delivery contrasts with Aldean’s slickly produced and packaged song — and from much of recent country music in heavy rotation on the radio. Over the past decade or more, country music critics have decried the genre’s obsession with superficiality (particularly “bro-country,” featuring young, white, male country stars who sing about beer, jeans, trucks, and picking up women). “Rich Men” is certainly more weighty than most contemporary heavy-rotation songs on country radio.
“Rich Men” is further helped by its lyrics’ inclusiveness, as Anthony sings about problems faced by “people like me, and people like you.” Compare that to “Try That In a Small Town,” which addresses would-be criminals with promises of retribution. Aldean threatens the person he’s singing to; Anthony commiserates with his listener.
Anthony’s mix of strong emotion and unfocused politics does have a parallel (hang on tight and let me finish): John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
“Imagine” gets a lot of guff for being a musical Communist manifesto. That’s a fair criticism of Lennon’s specific lyrics, particularly lines like, “Imagine no possessions” and multiple references to abolishing religion. Ironically, Lennon’s song promotes an idea that many religions have at the core of their teaching (if not always their practice): A hope for humanity to come together in harmony and live as one.
Even if you don’t like how Lennon gets there lyrically, you have to appreciate the core idea of peace and togetherness, especially one set against that wistful melody with some hope and optimism sprinkled in. “Imagine” doesn’t work for everyone as a political document. That’s ok: Not everything has to be a political document. It works beautifully as a song, though.
While “Rich Men North of Richmond” is more pessimistic, it has a similar effect, using genuine underlying emotion to animate the song. That sincerity is what separates it from Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town” — and sent it north of every other song on the Billboard charts.
