As Oliver Anthony’s gritty nation ballad ‘Wealthy Males North of Richmond’ went viral final week, the singer reveals he’s turned down $8 million provides from music executives — ‘I don’t wish to play stadium exhibits.’
In two brief weeks, Oliver Anthony’s “Wealthy Males North of Richmond” has turn into a viral hit, shortly turning into the primary track on iTunes throughout North America. Final week, Oliver Anthony revealed his actual title as Christopher Anthony Lunsford. He says the viral response to his music blew him away, as he solely anticipated it could get “lots of of hundreds” of views — not tens of millions.
In a prolonged Fb put up lamenting the present state of the world and explaining his background, Anthony says that his moniker “Oliver Anthony” is an homage to his grandfather, who lived within the Appalachian mountains within the Thirties. “Filth flooring, seven youngsters, exhausting occasions,” he writes.
“Folks within the music business give me clean stares after I brush off 8 million greenback provides. I don’t need six tour buses, 15 tractor-trailers, and a jet. I don’t wish to play stadium exhibits; I don’t wish to be within the highlight,” says Anthony in a Fb put up. “I wrote the music I wrote as a result of I used to be struggling (from) psychological well being and melancholy.”
“These songs have related with tens of millions of individuals on such a deep degree as a result of they’re being sung by somebody feeling the phrases within the very second they have been being sung. No enhancing, no agent, no bulls***. Just a few fool and his guitar. The fashion of music that we should always have by no means gotten away from within the first place.”
Anthony says that for the reason that track has gone viral, he has acquired greater than 50,000 messages from folks reacting to the monitor and its lyrics, with tales about “suicide, dependancy, unemployment, anxiousness and melancholy, hopelessness, and the record goes on.”
“From 2014 till only a few days in the past, I’ve labored outdoors gross sales within the industrial manufacturing world. My job has taken me throughout Virginia and into the Carolinas, attending to know tens of hundreds of different blue-collar employees on job websites and in factories,” Anthony continues. “I’ve spent all day, each day, for the final ten years, listening to the identical story. Individuals are so rattling uninterested in being uncared for, divided, and manipulated.”