It took Oliver Anthony less than two weeks to go from total unknown to viral hitmaker with his controversial country screed “Rich Men North of Richmond.” So, naturally, he has some opinions about Beyoncé.
The comments were made in a 15-minute YouTube clip titled “What I’ve Learned in the Music Industry So Far…” in which Anthony rants while driving by chickens, horses, and goats. “I had a lot to get off my chest,” he writes in the caption. “Hope ya’ll like it!”
Yeah, no. Roughly 10 minutes into the video, Anthony vents about the industry, claiming, “I don’t need a bunch of nerds and coffee-drinkin’ freaks in Nashville to tell me how to live my life. I guess that was my mistake for relying on those people, instead of relying on God and the people I trust.”
He takes a dig at his management, who entered the picture and got rid of everyone in Anthony’s circle who believed in his vision. He says management’s one goal was to try and make him cool. “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,” he said. “It makes me just want to throw up.”
From there, he moved onto Beyoncé’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” saying he couldn’t even get through the beginning of the Cowboy Carter track. “It’s just total cringe,” he said. “It represents how degenerative our society has become, that a song like a Beyoncé version of ‘Jolene’ can come out and anybody actually listen to it and think it’s not just complete fucking trash.”
He continued: “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. And God, if it’s that bad in music, it’s gotta be bad in everything.”
The clip follows the video that Anthony posted in late October, when he claimed he was pivoting away from the music industry to focus on ministry work — though he still plans on making music. “I’m in the process of getting out of the music industry,” he said. “It’s a big joke. The plan is to eventually change my entire focus to traveling ministry work …I just have to go at it in baby steps since it’s completely DIY.”
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