A month ago, Oliver Anthony had about 17 track listings on the iTunes top 100. “Rich Men North of Richmond:” Led the charge to number 1.
Four weeks later, “Rich Men” is still number 1 but there only four others on the chart by Anthony and no other in the top 25.
The Oliver Anthony party is over.
Anthony’s overnight grasp of the charts came from country music fans in red states thinking the unknown singer was speaking for them against the current administration. Fox News then used “Rich Men” during the GOP debate. Anthony objected.
Indeed, Anthony said he was on no one’s side politically. and he wasn’t happy about the Fox News usage. He wasn’t for or against President Biden, but all of the rich men in Washington. Once the right wingers who embraced him so heartily got the point, they began to drift away.
“Rich Men” has sold 901K copies according to Luminate. Of those, two thirds are from streaming, and one third from paid downloads. Total sales numbers aren’t calculated yet, but only a couple of other songs sold around 125K apiece. The rest were carried along on the wave of novelty. If the Luminate charts are correct, “Rich Men” is about to drop like a rock, too.
For Anthony he will always remember this 30 day moment as dizzying. no doubt. He was working on obscurity a month ago. If there had been talk shows day or night he might have skyrocketed further. But for now, the Oliver Anthony Music project looks like it went the way of the pet rock, only faster.
