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Oliver Anthony, the little-known country singer of last year’s viral “Rich Men North Of Richmond,” posted a video yesterday titled “What I’ve Learned from the Music Industry So Far…” where he reflects on his dealings with the mainstream music industry. He also disparaged Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album in an anecdote where an unnamed management company apparently pitched him a marketing idea where he’d praise Beyoncé’s country album, which Anthony rejected.
“One of the guys I worked with, he wanted me to make some stupid fucking post about Beyoncé’s country album, about how it was good, even though it was complete trash,” Anthony says in the clip. “It makes me just want to throw up… Even half trying to listen to the beginning of, like, her version of ‘Jolene,’ it’s just total cringe.”
He continues:
It represents how degenerative our society has become, that a song like a Beyoncé version of [Dolly Parton’s] “Jolene” can come out and anybody actually listen to it and think it’s not just complete trash. So I was supposed to make a post, basically trying to associate myself with Beyoncé in hopes of us doing some kind of song together, but you know, how many people do that? How many artists do you follow on social media that have never even looked at their social media, and you’re just reading words and posts and things that were written by somebody that you’ve never even met, that aren’t the artist, that don’t even necessarily work directly for the artist … It’s so much theatrics and illusion and characterizations that are built in this whole thing to like keep people hanging on for more.
The full video is below.