Oliver Anthony Artistfacts

1993-
Oliver Anthony is a country singer-songwriter from Farmville, Virginia. An off-the-grid farmer who used to work 12-hour shifts in a factory six days a week, he started writing music seriously in 2021, posting his own songs onto YouTube.

"Things were not good for a lot of people and in some respects I was one of those people," Anthony said. "I had wasted a lot of nights getting high and getting drunk and I had sort of gotten to a point in my life where even things that I did care about didn't mean anything to me anymore. This is certainly no Dr. Phil episode, but I found an outlet in this music. I started uploading a couple of songs."
Anthony recorded approximately a dozen songs on his cell phone, which he then uploaded to YouTube. They included "Ain't Gotta Dollar" "I Want To Go Home" and "Rich Man's Gold." The singer started getting messages from people saying how much the music was helping them with their struggles in their lives, and that gave him a purpose. "It made me feel like I wasn't just wasting my time," he said.
Anthony had been grappling with mental health challenges and battling alcohol misuse. In July 2023, he reached a breaking point and promised God that he would get sober if he helped him follow his dream. Roughly a month later, Radio WV invited him to produce a track for their YouTube music channel. This led to the creation of Anthony's viral hit, "Rich Men North Of Richmond."
Though "Rich Men North of Richmond" is a conservative anthem, Anthony's political beliefs are more centrist.

"I'll say this, I sit pretty dead center down the aisle on politics and always have," he said in a video. "I remember as a kid the conservatives wanting war and me not understanding that, and I remember a lot of the controversies when the left took office, and it seems like both sides serve the same master and that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country."
His real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford and his friends know him as "Chris." He performs as Oliver Anthony as a tribute to his late grandfather of the same name.

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