Oliver Anthony is stepping back from the music industry.
His announcement comes just over a year since his song “Rich Men North of Richmond” claimed the No.1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.
“I’ve decided that moving forward, I don’t need a Nashville music company,” Anthony said in a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, Oct. 29. “I don’t even need to exist within the space of music. So I’m looking at switching my whole business over to a traveling ministry.”
Earlier, Anthony said that he was “In the process of getting out of the music industry,” while responding to a comment on a social media video, per Rolling Stone.
“It’s a big joke,” he added, reported the outlet.
Speaking in the YouTube video, the country singer added that he still plans to release music “like normal,” but that it would be through his new ministry called “The Rural Revival Project.” He continued that this would “just be set up legally as a ministry” and that its first “completely DIY” show is planned for Nov. 2.
“I want to create a routing schedule to exist parallel to Nashville that circumvents the monopolies of Live Nation and Ticketmaster,” he explained in his YouTube video. “And it goes to towns that haven’t had music in a long time and it stimulates their economies.”
According to his website, the singer said he wants to play in “shows in towns and counties” that find themselves in “financial deficit,” and that the project is “focused on revitalizing rural farms and communities, promoting sustainable development, and improving the quality of life for people living in rural areas.”
Mike Caudill/Billboard via Getty
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He also said that he hoped to reach out to “people who have just gotten out of rehab, with PTSD, and people who are depressed and suicidal” and “learn to exist outside of a system that has just kind of been placed on us as a generation.”
In the new video, the singer, whose song “Rich Men North of Richmond” was embraced by the right after it was released, also reflected on whether he is a “conservative.”
“I guess I’m a conservative,” he said. “I am a conservative because I believe in the first and second amendment. I don’t know if I’m a Republican or what the hell I am. I am just somebody who thinks the whole way we live is so ass-backward and so stupid. It serves no one than people at the top of a hierarchy that we no longer really need to serve.”
Samuel Corum/Getty
The socio-political song “Rich Men North of Richmond” first gained traction on TikTok before it was uploaded to the radiowv YouTube account in August, 2023. It garnered over 32 million views on the platform and shot to the top of the charts through downloads, official streams and radio plays.
Despite the songs’ success, Anthony shared on his website that he didn’t “want to be in the spotlight” and said he “wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression.”
“These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they’re being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no b——-. Just some idiot and his guitar,” the Farmville, Virginia singer-songwriter said. “The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place.”
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