Billy Bragg Says People Upset About The "Rich Men" Should Join A Union And Fight, Not Sink To Race-Baiting & Conspiracy Theories

"Since I saw that clip of Oliver Anthony singing his song 'Rich Men North of Richmond', the ghost of Woody Guthrie has been whispering in my ear. "Help that guy out" Woody keeps telling me "Let him know there's a way to deal with those problems he's singing about". So today I sat down and wrote this response to Mr Anthony's song, for people like him and people like you..." Billy Bragg, August 2023

Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond" came out of no where to become a viral hit this summer, as well as a cultural and political touchstone. It was hailed as a searing declaration of working class resentment, but upon closer examination, it seemed to give in to conspiracy theories and race-baiting rather than seek actual solutions to very real problems.

Billy Bragg has a response:

Rich Men Earning North of a Million

[Verse 1]
If you're selling your soul, working all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Well, nothing's gonna change if all you do
Is wish you could wake up and it not be true

[Chorus 1]
Join a union
Fight for better pay
You better join a union, brother
Organize today
You'll see where the problem really lies
When the union comes around
Rich men earning north of a million
Wanna keep the working folk down
Wanna keep the working folk down

[Verse 2]
If you form a union, you'll soon find
That working people are all of one kind
So we ain't gonna punch down on those who need
A bit of understanding and some solidarity
That ain't right friend

[Verse 3]
If you're struggling with your health and you're putting on the pounds
Doctor gives you opiates to help you get around
Well, wouldn't it be better for folks like you and me
If medicine was subsidized and healthcare was free?

[Chorus 2]
Join a union
Fight for better pay
Come on and join a union, sister
Organize today
It comes down to the selfsame thing
If you're black or white or brown
Rich men earning north of a million
Wanna keep the working folk down
Wanna keep the working folk down

[Verse 4]
Well, we know your culture wars are there to distract
While libertarian billionaires avoid paying tax
You wanna talk about bathrooms while the floodwaters rise
The forest is on fire and the wind burns our eyes, ah!
Something's wrong here

[Verse 5]
Well, they wanna divide us because together we're strong
Are you gonna take action now you sung your damn song?
If you don't like the rich men having total control
You better get the union to roll

[Chorus 3]
Join a union
Fight for better pay
Come on and join a union
Organise today
Don't matter if you live in the city
Or some little country town
Rich men earning north of a million
Rich men earning north of a million
I say, rich men earning north of a million
Wanna keep the working folk down
Wanna keep the working folk down

[Outro]
If you're selling your soul and you're working all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Join a union

The Guardian: Oliver Anthony’s divisive song claiming solidarity with workers only benefits the rich who exploit them

Billy Bragg

The YouTube singer’s US No 1 hit Rich Men North of Richmond rails against billionaires but punches down on the poor. So I decided to write a song in reply

Tue 22 Aug 2023 04.59 EDT

‘Don’t mourn: organise” were the last words of the great union songwriter Joe Hill, framed on a murder charge and executed in Salt Lake City, Utah, in November 1915. A reminder to activists that the struggle carries on even though a strike may end in defeat, they’re also a handy maxim for anyone writing songs about the pressures that working people face. If you hope to inspire, rather than just providing a litany of problems, then it’s necessary for your song to offer some vision of redemption. While it is clearly beyond the scope of the songwriter to provide a cure for society’s ills, there is a role to play in calling out where you perceive the problem to lie and suggesting a possible way forward.

Joe Hill’s words came to mind when I heard Rich Men North of Richmond, a song posted on YouTube two weeks ago by Oliver Anthony, a young singer from Farmville, Virginia. The clip has since had 31m views. Yesterday it entered the Billboard charts at No 1, an unprecedented feat for an artist with no prior recording history.

At first glimpse, the video clip looked like my kind of music: a young bearded guy up in the woods of Appalachia, playing a resonator guitar. As soon as he started singing, I was on board. “I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay.” Preach, brother! When Anthony sang of “rich men north of Richmond, they want to have total control” I had in my mind corporate America, the tech bro billionaires whose companies monitor their workers all the way to the bathroom and back.

Oliver Anthony: Rich Men North of Richmond – video

I was still with him when he highlighted “folks on the street with nothing to eat” but was brought up sharp when he followed it with “and the obese milkin’ welfare”. Whoa! What is he saying here? Homeless hungry people need help, but not if they’re overweight? When the next line attacked short, fat people who receive welfare only to spend it on chocolate biscuits, I figured the song was a parody. Why didn’t he rhyme “tax” with “snacks”, the songwriter in me thought. But it isn’t a parody.

The protest song that’s taken America by storm hits too many false notes

Kenan Malik

Read more

Anthony really does punch down on the poor. The lives of ordinary working people are being torn apart by the rich, he laments, but we can fix it if we cut welfare – and taxes too. Listening to the lyrics in that context, I came to understand why the song had gone viral among rightwing figures in the US. It’s a classic example of the divisive narrative that bosses have used to pit worker against worker since the days of Joe Hill. If the poor are fighting one another over racial hierarchy or cultural grievance, their anger will be directed away from the people responsible for their plight – the rich who exploit those in work and abandon those in need.

Anthony has said that he hoped the song would capture the voice of blue-collar workers who feel like they can’t get ahead, which is a laudable aim, but he doesn’t seem aware that there is a remedy for that problem, one which empowers working people. His home state Virginia is currently undergoing a resurgence in union activism. Local radio station WVTF reported last year that the push to organise is being led by young people around Anthony’s age. Joining a union won’t solve all of the problems he sings about, but if he really wants to stop rich men having total control, then organising in the workplace is surely the first step to gaining some sense of agency?

Billy Bragg: Rich Men Earning North of a Million – video

There’s a tradition in popular music of artists writing “answer songs” that reply to issues raised by the hits of the day, so this weekend I sat down to compose a response to Rich Men North of Richmond that offered some fraternal advice to the beleaguered characters Anthony represents. Given I was writing in a country style, I thought of how Johnny Paycheck was able to express the anger of the working man without blaming those worse off than him in Take This Job and Shove It. I recalled how Johnny Cash believed in flag, faith and family, yet wore black in solidarity with the poor. But most of all, I thought of Woody Guthrie who wrote: “I hate a song that makes you think you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. I’m out to fight those songs to my very last breath.”

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Woody knew that cynicism was the enemy of all of us who want to make a better world, so I’m ignoring those who accuse Anthony of deliberately stoking the culture wars that have divided America. I hear someone struggling to make sense of a world in which help is hard to come by. I wish Oliver Anthony all the best with his newfound fame. I hope it allows him to make a living playing music. But I know from experience that he’s going to face a lot of scrutiny from partisan players demanding he clarify his politics.

I wrote to offer him the perspective of someone whose understanding of solidarity and songwriting was shaped 40 years ago by the miner’s strike. The lesson I learned is as relevant today as it was back then: There is power in a union.

Rich Men North of Richmond by Oliver AnthonyI've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay

Damon Albarn & Blur Drop Three Cool, New Out-Takes: "The Rabbi", "The Swan" & "Sticks And Stones" (feat Graham on vocals)

 

Blur has reunited for a new album, The Ballad of Darren. The deluxe version contains this two out-takes, "The Rabbi" and "The Swan".

The single "St.Charles Square" is a return to form:

Sometimes it's good to go back and remember why we liked them in the first place:

                                                                          

                                                                       Song #2

Parklife

ThisSmallPlanet.com 2023 Summer Playlist: Cool New Music

 

ThisSmallPlanet.com 2023 Summer Playlist: Cool New Music

Patti Smith: "Dancing Barefoot" live Stern Grove, San Francisco, 8/13/23

ALBUMS

BEST NEW ALBUM (TIE): PJ Harvey. I Inside The Old Year Dying. 

BEST NEW ALBUM (TIE): Blur. The Ballad Of Darren. Out-takes "Sticks And Stones", "The Rabbi" & "The Swan" also out now.

Grian Chatten. Chaos For The Fly. Fontaines D.C. frontman's debut solo album. Change of pace from the band's heavy sound. One of the surprise hits of summer.

Paul Simon. Seven Psalms. Very good.

Bully. Lucky For You. Rock n roll. Female singer.

Ben Harper. Wide Open Light. Calm and calming.

Bob Dylan. Shadow Kingdom. The soundtrack of last year's concert film of the same name. Dylan reworks some of his all-time classics.

Queens Of The Stone Age. In Times New Roman... Another classic from QOTSA....

Tinariwen. Amatssou. Sahel desert revolution.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. Soothing acoustic sounds.

Kevin Morby. More Photographs: A Continuum. Good stuff!

Sparks. The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte. Pure Pop Classic!

The Hives. The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons. Sweden's finest hard rockers are back.

Toro Y Moi. Mahal (Live From Big Sur). Sounds of the 70s but today.

Bush Tetras. They Live In My Head. Punk vets reunite for very decent album.

Juan Wauters. Wandering Rebel.

Wye Oak. Every Day Like the Last. 

Bonny Doon. Let There Be Music. Former backing band for Waxahatchee steps out on their own.

M. Ward. Supernatural Thing.

Andrew Bird. Outside Problems. An album of instrumentals.

Rancid. Tomorrow Never Comes.

Rufus Wainwright. Folkocracy. Surprisingly good take on some cool classics. Unexpected.

Bonny Doon. Let There Be Music.

Witch. Zango. Cool sounds from Zambia.

Various Artists. The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake. Covers of Nick Drake songs by Fontaines D.C., Ben Harper, Liz Phair, and others.

Various Artists. Playing For The Man At The Door: Field Recordings From Mack McCormick, 1958-1971. Feat. Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and other classic recordings by the infamous late blues documentarian Mack McCormick, who had a hellhound on his trail. 

Rest In Peace....

Sixto Rodriguez (1942 - 2023). Detroit-based Mexican-American singer/songwriter featured in the award-winning documentary Searching For Sugarman.

Thank you for the music.

"Searching For Sugarman" trailer

Rodriguez: "Cold Fact" album

Grian Chatten live on Later with Jools

G

Blue Cheer. "Summertime Blues" (1968)

Cate Blanchett in Sparks' "The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte"

SINGLES

Yard Act's "The Trench Coat Museum"

Bonnie "Prince" Billy. "Bananas." &  "Crazy Blue Bells"

MJ Lenderman. "Rudolph" & "Knockin'" (Wednesday's guitarist's solo project)

Rob Moose feat Phoebe Bridgers. "Wasted".

Phoebe Bridgers. "Waiting Room" (Deep cut re-released)

Blur. "St. Charles Square". A return to form for Damon Albarn and Co.

Sturgill Simpson (AKA Brother Marshall & The Choir of Fire)."All The Gold In California" (Gatlin Bros. cover for "The Righteous Gemstones")

Glen Hansard. "The Feast Of St. John"

Jon Batiste. "Life Lesson" feat Lana Del Rey

Andrew Bird. "Mo Teef"

Devendra Banhart. "Sirens"

Big Thief. "Vampire Empire" They performed it a little differently live on Colbert  a few months ago.

A. Savage. "Thanksgiving Prayer" & "Elvis In The Army". Solo efforts of Andrew S, one of Parquet Courts' two singer/guitarist/songwriters.

Wilco. "Evicted"

Billy Bragg. "Rich Men Earning North of a Million"

Peter Gabriel. "So Much" (Dark-Side Mix)

Lord Huron. "Ace Up My Sleeve" (The Sterling Girl soundtrack)

Prince. "7 E Flat Version" & "All A Share Together Now". Two songs from Prince's vault.

Rob Grant. "Lost At Sea" feat Lana Del Rey. Lana's a guest vocalist on her piano player father's song:

ARCHIVAL

Mississippi Fred McDowell. Jesus On The Mainline. Two live shows: April 14, 1971 in Tacoma and November 5, 1971 at the Gaslight in New York City (Fred's final recording).

Billie Holiday. Live in Los Angeles 1946. Simply great.

Kak. Kak-Ola (1968). Psychedelic classic. Gary Lee Yoder went on to play with Blue Cheer.

The Who. Back At The Fillmore. (1969). Great.

The Who. Who's Next: Life House. Not sure when I'll get to hear the entire 11-disc box set of Who's Next-era demos, out-takes, and live cuts (1970-1972) since it costs $300, but I'm sure it's great. I've only heard the first disc and a few other songs so far.

Nina Simone. You've Got To Learn. (Live Newport Jazz Festival 1966)

Neil Young. Chrome Dreams.

Iggy Pop. Rare Trax. Alternate versions of some the classics including "China Girl" and "Lust For Life".

The Clash. London Calling (Expanded Edition). A good excuse to go back and listen to this classic album, along with the rehearsal recording The Vanilla Tapes (1979).

Big Joe Williams. Back To The Roots. Big Joe Got The Blues. And he wants to give them to you.

Sister O.M. Terrell. Sister O.M. Terrell.  Reminds me of Memphis Minnie and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. 

Michael Bloomfield. Living In The Fast Lane (Expanded Edition)(1981). One of the best guitarists ever just hanging out and playing songs.

John Coltrane. Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy. (1961)

                                           Cool Video: MJ Lenderman at Pitchfork 2023

           HIGHLY ANTICIPATED LATE SUMMER/EARLY FALL RELEASES

Hiss Golden Messenger. Jump For Joy [Merge] August 25

Buck Meek. Haunted Mountain. Big Thief's guitarist solo debut. [4AD] August 25

                                           "Haunted Mansion" by Buck Meek (guitarist from Big Thief)

Sparklehorse. Bird Machine. (ANTI-Records) September 8. Posthumous collection of songs by Mark Linkous who died by suicide in 2010. Includes a Robyn Hitchcock cover "Listening To The Higsons", "Daddy's Gone" from his David Lynch/Danger Mouse collaboration Dark Night Of The Soul, and the singles "It Will Never Stop" & "The Scull of Lucia".

Devendra Banhart. Flying Wig [Mexican Summer] September 22

Wilco. Cousin. [dBpm] September 29

A. Savage. Several Songs About Fire [Rough Trade] October 6. Second solo album from Andrew of Parquet Courts. His first solo album was very good and expectations are high for this one.

Glen Hansard.  All That Was East Is West Of Me Now [ANTI-Records] October 20

=======================================================

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