It came to the surprise of many that Oliver Anthony, the viral singer-songwriter out of Virginia, made his way onto the most recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
If Anthony didn’t feel it already, being a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast is a real “you made it” moment. While on the show, the “Rich Men North of Richmond” singer obviously touched on his hit song and the overwhelming response from country fans, but he and Rogan also got pretty deep into certain portion’s of Anthony’s life.
At one point, Rogan led the conversation into a place where Oliver Anthony began to speak about why he had such an expansive catalogue of songs already uploaded underneath “Oliver Anthony Music.” The country artist opened up and said that many of them were uploaded during a very tough time in his life when he was battling with depression.
Anthony opened up and said:
“Suicide is a weird thing, and I can’t speak for everybody, but for me, it wasn’t that I ever wanted to kill myself. I knew I wanted to keep trying to fight and get out of whatever it is I was in.
But it was almost like, at some point, I thought I was going to do it almost as a fight-or-flight response. That I couldn’t escape whatever it was I was in, and that was going to eventually be my only way out.”
The subject matter was clearly something very personal to Anthony, who seemed to suddenly realize that he was letting millions of people into some of the most challenging moments of his life by sharing. However, that didn’t stop him from continuing on:
“I hate even talking about this, but I feel like I should talk about it. Where else to talk about it but on Joe Rogan? That was one of the things that compelled me to throw a lot of these videos up just off my phone.
It’s funny, when I had those songs…and maybe I still do. I haven’t looked at the charts in a week or whatever, but I had stuff on iTunes that was in the top two or three spots, other songs, those were just recorded off my Android phone, uploaded to YouTube. I ripped the wave file off the YouTube video and then just uploaded it through Distrokid.”
Staying true the authenticity that has helped propel him to stardom, it turns out that a lot of the songs of his that people are paying good money for were recorded using equipment that you are probably holding in your hand right now.
Anthony went on to say that when he looked at the country charts recently, one of those “low budget recordings” was one of the hottest songs in the United States:
“People were buying (it). The number two song on iTunes at one point, I think it was ‘Ain’t Gotta Dollar,’ that’s just the audio from the YouTube video, but I wanted to get all those songs out there.”
Joe Rogan could barely believe what the country music artist was saying, and double checked that he correctly heard what Anthony said by asking:
“So it’s from a microphone from a phone? A standard microphone? It sounds pretty good…”
Oliver responded:
“Regular microphone, the microphone from my front camera on my Android phone. I wanted to get all that up, and I really didn’t know if I was going to be around to do it.”
Rogan was astounded by the revelation and insisted that they track down the song “Ain’t Gotta Dollar” right then and there to listen to it. The audio team pulls it up and hits play, and just like that, the song that Anthony recorded with his phone was playing to millions of people.
Rogan was impressed by the sound quality, and even joked:
“Recording off Android phones might be the new thing. The new ‘authentic.’ Recording off of Android phones.”
As the both sat back and listened to the song, it was clear that Rogan was a fan of the simplistic recording style, and Oliver appeared to enjoy it as well as he patted along to the tune on the table.
Rogan signals to cut the song off, and looks straight at Anthony and smiles as he says:
“Listen man, you ain’t gotta listen to nobody. Tell them all to eat sh*t. Shut the f**k up. You can do whatever you want man.”
Rogan telling it like it is as always, and giving a statement that a lot of country music fans would agree with. You already know every label, every manager, every agent in town is trying to grab hold of Oliver right now… so the reminder from Joe is probably a necessary one.
The full interview can be viewed below through Spotify, and the portion transcribed above can be heard around one hour and five minutes into the video:
