Protest: Breakthrough song ‘RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND’ No 1 on Billboard Hot 100

New protest anthem has 42 million youtube views

(10) Oliver Anthony - Rich Men North Of Richmond - YouTube

Here is my take on the brilliant song that within days of its release rose to the top of the Billboard charts. I’ve included the chords.

Em C

I've been selling my soul, working all day.

The first line of the song is very profound. In the capitalist system, workers sell their God-given time and energy- to the bosses. But it’s not a fair exchange on the market. Workers sell their ‘soul’ at low pay out of necessity, not choice.

G D

Overtime hours, for bullshit pay.

The bosses keep down labour costs artificially (‘bullshit pay.’) The longer and cheaper the labour hours are the more profit goes to the bosses.

Families struggle to pay for food, electricity and heating. To make a comfortable living nowadays, £25 ($31.50) an hour is fair.

The majority of the world are underpaid and live under the poverty line in their respective countries. Bosses and governments crack down on unions that fight for higher wages, less hours, job security and safe working conditions.

People are forced into overtime and taking out loans just to keep pace with the cost of living.

They drink and take drugs to escape the misery of their lives. Oliver Anthony is a former factory worker and recovering alcoholic who fell heavily into debt.

Em C

So I can sit out here, and waste my life away.

G D

Drag back home, and drown my troubles away.

Low paid workers suffer from exhaustion, ill health and early death.

Where there is high income inequality, lives are shortened.

In the US, the poorest 1% die 14.6 years earlier than the richest 1%.[i]

As the poet Wordsworth wrote in 1815, ‘Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’

The class-based educational system siphons the majority off into low paying jobs. People should not be streamed into low to high skilled labour markets at birth. Everyone deserves to develop their God-given skills and talents.

The idea we live in a society of equal opportunities is a travesty. What’s needed are equal outcomes.

Em C

It's a damn shame, what the world's gotten to.

G D

For people like me, and people like you.

A global study of 500,000 people across the world named financial security, family, community, compassion, freedom of speech and leisure as some of their top influential values[ii]. It is shameful that elites crush common hopes and dreams held by people like you and me i.e. the majority.

Em C

Wish I could just wake up, and it not be true.

G D

But it is, aw it is.

This bad situation is not going away. This is like a call to face up to reality, in order to change it. The revolutionary 19th century poet Keats exhorts us to ‘Rise like Lions after slumber/In unvanquishable number/Shake your chains like earth to the dew/Ye are many, they are few.’

Em C G D

Livin' in the new world, with an old soul.

This line in Oliver Anthony’s song is the one people resonate with the most. An old soul is a wise soul who knows right from wrong.

It’s painful for an old soul to live in a world that breeds death, destruction and disunity.

It benefits the rich to make you to believe it’s ‘human nature’ to always be fighting and in poverty. That we just have to accept our lot in life.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Anthropologists agree that the human race has survived for millennia because of community, cooperation and altruism.

As John Ball, the leader of the peasant rebellion of 1381, asked: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?’ (In the 14th century, gentlemen referred to the hereditary ruling class.)

Em C

These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all

G D

just wanna have total control

Em C

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do.

In the past, severe physical punishment and servitude was used to keep the poor in check. Today, modern technology is designed to wield control over what you think and what you do.

‘North of Richmond’ probably refers to Washington DC and wherever elites conspire in secrecy to wield power over the rest of us. They own the money, land and the big guns.

They own mainstream media and the world’s information technologies.

G D

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do.

Oliver’s song crashes through the elites’ fakery barrier. This line seems to speak of the rising tide of spiritual awakening. Check out the numbers of anti government protests around the world, on Global Protest Tracker. [iii]

The rich think we are stupid, but history is on our side, and the truth always prevails.That’s why this song is so popular because it speaks the truth that mainstream media, bosses and politicians want to cover up. Bob Dylan wrote in ‘Master of War’: ‘But I see through your eyes/And I see through your brain.’

Em C

'Cause your dollar ain't shit, and it's taxed to no end.

'Cause of rich men, north of Richmond.

The second verse begins:

Em C

I wish politicians would look out for miners.

G D

And not just minors on an island somewhere.

These lines are direct hits - ‘truth bombs.’ The rich men of Richmond send adults and children down mines. Meanwhile, wealthy pederasts and sex traffickers go free. Only one person, Jeffrey Epstein has been brought to account. But the cat is out of the bag;[iv] they can’t hide their dirty secrets and depravity any longer.

Em C

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat.

150 million people are homeless or lack adequate housing worldwide.[v] Half a million of them live in the US.

The rich want to make you think that if you’re on the street, that’s your fault. They want you to believe that we live in a world of scarcity, with only so much of the pie to go around. They cover up their hordes of wealth in tax shelters and dodges.

In 2022, the wealth share of the global top 1% was 44.5%, according to Credit Suisse.

There is plenty to go around, if managed fairly and rationally.

G D

And the obese, milkin' welfare.

This reference to milk and obesity resurrects the term ‘fat cats,’ bosses who earn unreasonably high salaries and bonuses.

Credit: North Edinburgh News, 2019

Em C

But God, if you're five foot three and you're three hundred pounds.

G D

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.

The small height size (five foot three) reminds us again of the fat cat.

This small minority of fat cats are taxed leniently.

This shows how greedy the fat cats are, gorging themselves off the fruit of our labours.

Taxes should pay for housing, education, social services, not to fatten up the already wealthy.

Em C

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground.

G D

'Cause all this damn country does, is keep on kickin' them down.

Young men die in the US in wars, through over-work and mental depression.

Generations of youth have been used as cannon fodder.

Wars benefit bankers and arms sellers. Elites manufacture narratives to justify aggressive wars that fulfil their bloodlust. Bob Dylan wrote in ‘Masters of War’: ‘Like Judas of old/You Lie and deceive/A world war can be won/You want me to believe.’ No war can be ‘won’ in a world with nuclear weapons.

In the sixties, Edwin Starr sang

‘War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?’
Absolutely nothing.’

Country Joe and the Fish sang:

‘One, two, three, what are we fighting for?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn/Next stop is Vietnam.’

Kids sign up to militaries because they don’t have job opportunities and reason to hope for a better life. That’s what I tried to express in my song: ‘Don’t go.’ (10) DON' T GO (TO IRAN) SUNG BY JODY CODY - YouTube

Conclusion

The poet Keats wrote, ‘ye are many, they are few,’ referencing a famous mass rally of 60,000 people protesting the high price of bread in 1819 in the north of England .

Oliver’s song is to my mind a call to action. It transcends racial divisions, as evidenced by glowing ‘reaction’ reviews by Black Americans on youtube.

United we stand, divided we fall.

As the US labour organiser and songwriter Joe Hill wrote in 1915, ‘Don’t Mourn, Organize.’