Another one from viral sensation Oliver Anthony.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably very familiar with the Farmville, Virginia resident’s working class anthem “Rich Men North Of Richmond”, which speaks to numerous issues plaguing America and resonated with huge swatches of the population.
It was (and still is) so popular that Oliver (real name Christopher Anthony Lunsford) became the first artist to make their Billboard Hot 100 debut at number one, and one of the only unsigned artists to take the top spot. The video, posted by RadioWV, has over 33 million views as of the time I’m writing this, with just under 18 million streams on Spotify to boot.
This wasn’t the first time he put his music online, however. Over the past 3 or so years, Oliver posted a few originals and some covers to his social media accounts, including a clip of a song called “I Want To Go Home,” which was uploaded to TikTok back in March.
Well, just tonight Oliver posted a full acoustic performance of this song to his YouTube channel and it’s another good one.
The song lives very much in the same vein as “Rich Men North Of Richmond,” speaking to numerous issues that affect many people in this country, but this one comes at it from somewhat of a more personal angle.
“If it weren’t for my old dogs and the good Lord
They’d have me strung up in the psych ward
Cause every day living in this new world
Is one too many days to me
Son, we’re on the brink of the next World War
And I don’t think nobody’s praying no more
And I ain’t saying I know it for sure
I’m just down on my knees, begging the Lord to take me home
I want to go home”
He goes on to speak of family farms being sold, urban spread, and people blindly believing to the media, tying it all together by asking the Lord to take him home.
To be honest, I was hoping we’d see a bit more variety from Oliver after the narrow focus of his first hit. It is a good song and there’s obviously plenty of time for him to expand his catalogue, plus it’s hard to fault him leaning in when the iron’s hot, but this song is so similar to “Rich Men” that it’s difficult to see this one making much of a splash: Those who would have loved it will most likely fall back on “Rich Men” since it has so much more power behind it.
Let us know what you think of this one, I’m genuinely curious to know how it’s going to be received.
Regardless, it goes to show that Oliver Anthony is going to be sticking around for some time.
