Lex Fridman Podcast
#469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain
Tue, 20 May 2025
Oliver Anthony is singer-songwriter who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are voiceless, with many of his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep469-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/oliver-anthony-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Oliver's X: https://x.com/AintGottaDollar Oliver's Instagram: https://instagram.com/oliver_anthony_music_ Oliver's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@oliveranthonymusic Oliver's TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@oliveranthonymusic Oliver's Website: https://oliveranthonymusic.com/ Oliver's FaceBook: https://facebook.com/OliverAnthonyMusicOfficial/ Oliver's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/oliveranthonymusic SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: MasterClass: Online classes from world-class experts. Go to https://masterclass.com/lexpod Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex Oracle: Cloud infrastructure. Go to https://oracle.com/lex Tax Network USA: Full-service tax firm. Go to https://tnusa.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (09:00) - Open mics (13:03) - Mainstream country music (22:10) - Fame (28:06) - Music vs politics (36:56) - Rich Men North of Richmond (47:06) - Popularity, money, and integrity (1:01:54) - Blue-collar people (1:13:57) - Depression (1:38:50) - Nature (2:01:26) - Three-legged cat (2:09:57) - I Want to Go Home (live performance) (2:13:36) - Guitar backstory (2:17:58) - Playing live this year PODCAST LINKS: - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips
Chapter 1: Who is Oliver Anthony and what is his background?
The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer-songwriter from Virginia, who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit, Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are voiceless, with his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life. His legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. Oliver Anthony was his grandfather's name.
And so Chris used this name as a dedication to his grandfather and to 1930s Appalachia, where his grandfather was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times, as Chris says. He's happy to be called either one, by the way. I've gotten to know Chris more since the recording of this conversation.
He truly is, as he appears online and in his songs, down to earth, humble, and a good man who deeply feels the pain of the downtrodden. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We've got Masterclass for learning, Shopify for selling stuff, Oracle for computing, Tax Network USA for taxes, and Element for electrolytes. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. I do them differently than most podcasts do. Usually, I barely talk about the sponsor, and instead, just take this quiet moment to talk about things I'm reading or thinking about.
A little Bob Ross-like heart-to-heart between you and me. Also, unlike most podcasts, I don't do ads in the middle. So they're all bunched up here in one place. You can skip if you like, but if you do, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfriedman.com contact.
All right, on to the ethereal realm of sponsor land. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by Masterclass, where you can watch over 200 classes from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. You know I know so little about filmmaking. The Scorsese Masterclass was instructive. Scorsese himself, his approach, his deliberate, passionate, almost bipolar approach
approach to filmmaking into editing. It's inspiring to watch madness manifest into genius. I think about the hand-drawn storyboards for Taxi Driver. haven't seen them, heard about them. And that, I think, is the birthplace of great films, is the storyboards, right? Really, it's the vision in the mind of somebody like Scorsese that then is projected onto the storyboards.
So the storyboards is just a slice, but that's the first time they take shape in a visual, physical reality. I should do that more. I should think in the space, in the realm of storyboards, especially when I try to do sort of vlog, documentary, filmmaking type of stuff. Really inspiring.
Anyway, get unlimited access to every Masterclass and get an additional 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com slash lexpod. That's masterclass.com slash lexpod. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great-looking online store. I got a chance to talk to DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, for many, many, many hours.
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Chapter 3: How does fame affect artists in the music industry?
are put here and are idolized and spotlighted and they're all over television and they're all over the internet and we act like they're kings and queens and like that they're royalty. And then all these people who do jobs that, Most of us will be too terrified, either wouldn't have even the ability to do. We'd be like, how many people are going to go underwater and weld?
But if we didn't have underwater welders, like one of my best friends, whose name is also Jocko, funny enough, the dude worked 70, 80 hours every week. He's on the Chesapeake Bay tunnel job now. But the dude's gotten on heights that I couldn't get on. He's went underground places I wouldn't go. And
Nobody will ever – like nobody even knows those people's stories or what they went through or like the kind of lives they lived. And they're like the people who create the fabric of society and even the waitresses and the waiters and like all these factory jobs that I worked in.
All those people – like talk about the craziest place I ever worked and the craziest people I ever met was this little place called Perfect Air in Marion, North Carolina. And it was this commercial air conditioning factory, which is I think closed now. Yeah. They didn't pay very well.
And so everyone they hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn't get jobs elsewhere or idiots who dropped out of high school and couldn't work elsewhere like me. And so I was 18 years old working in this place with people who are mostly in their 50s and 60s.
But you want to talk about being exposed to just a whole nother world of people like and just the stories and the just... Those people are far more interesting than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities. Like most people who are celebrities are just pretty boring and airheaded and don't really even know what real life is about. They're pretty unrelatable to the rest of the world.
And so it would be really cool. I mean, that's the whole reason that I want to go out and do these shows in places that haven't had music in them in 10 years, because those people like that is America to me.
You know, how many people in Pittsburgh have been an hour outside of Pittsburgh and even in Virginia, if you lived in Northern Virginia and you drive two and a half hours Southwest, you're in a whole nother planet, like the people, the accents, the culture. And so I feel driven in the same way. Like I would love to, I would love to find a way to, uh,
to try to bridge that cultural gap, to make those people relevant and to make, because they are like some of the most, and like, and it's funny because we emulate a lot of those people, like, you know, modern country music is a bunch of people emulating those people, you know?
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of 'Rich Men North of Richmond'?
Um, once he gets, once they get through all the mess that like, they got their hands full a little bit right now with things, but whether I go that route or not, it's like, that's my goal is to basically create a place that people can go and like, and fix their mind and find the optimal thing. You know, we've got laying birds and meat birds.
So we have, we get our eggs and meat and then, um, we've done pigs and sheep and goats. And then I'm going to start with cat. I'm going to get cattle in the spring. Um, so we'll start doing like Wagyu and Angus and playing around with, and I want to get some funny stuff too.
Like, um, I just large animals have a lot of, you know, there's all these like large animal therapies out there for mental health, like with vets and stuff. It's just something, it's something really relaxing and rewarding about being in that space.
What do you, uh, what do you find out there in nature that you can't find anywhere else? I can't find in the, in the quote, civilized world.
Well, everything in civilization seems so, like everything we've talked about, it seems so like, there's such a level of despair and unorganization and chaos and just like, and all these like terrible parts of life that seem like so unstructured and just so uncertain. But in nature, everything is certain.
Everything has a system like, even on the microbial level of soil, there's this like intricate system and- you know, soil fixes, like the bacteria fixes the soil and like, and you can grow certain types of plants to restore certain types of nutrients. And then that can grow certain types of trees. And then that can bring in certain types of birds. And it's like this whole big,
nature is just this whole big, beautiful system, you know, like earth is just such an intricate, complex system that is structured. And although there is chaos, there's literal tornadoes, you know, like the metaphor we were using earlier, like there are literal tornadoes in nature and other things, but there's, there's a piece about observing the structure there.
And to me, it like, it just helps, it helps remind and restore my faith that there is something bigger than me that like, Yeah. And there's a spiritual side to it that I don't know that I can really correctly articulate. But man, sitting out in the woods with some creek flowing by you and just sitting in stillness, like where you don't hear anything, there's no traffic from a road, there's no...
You know, you're just there in stillness and just watching the earth do its things.
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