Asong addressing such salient political issues as currency debasement, the displacement of miners in our green economy, and the Fudge Rounds Question achieved a feat Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” and Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” could not.
Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the second consecutive week. It looks unlikely to abdicate its position soon. As Billboard points out, “Of the 34 songs to premiere atop the Hot 100 this decade, it’s just the second to increase in streams (17.5 million to 22.9 million) in its second week.” In other words, in contrast to Swift’s and Cyrus’s recent monster hits, it gained rather than lost momentum after its first week.
The temptation to group “Rich Men North of Richmond” with Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” and Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee”—country songs delving into political controversies in a similarly explicit way—appears understandable. But this sensation seems a closer fit to what some call “topical songs” and others “protest music.”
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