Oliver Anthony, whose hit song “Rich Men North of Richmond” is at the top of the charts and created a political firestorm on both sides of the aisle, took to The Joe Rogan Experience on Wednesday for a longform interview about his life and many other topics.
After saying in a tearful video posted last week that he was uncomfortable being presented as a flag-bearer for the right by hopeful Republican presidential candidates during last week’s debate, Anthony was cagey about any political leanings about “Rich Men”: He said little more than “at least I know I’m doing something right” by upsetting both sides of the aisle with the song. But the conversation soon sprawled in a Rogan-esque manner into many tangents, tackled with the grace and nuance of barflies who avoid reading the news: The ills of society, celebrities, heritage, child stars, the internet, government corruption, big pharma, microplastics, fitness and more were all up for discussion in the first hour alone.
One surprising topic that sparked interest in Anthony was pornography, which came up while the duo was discussing businesses that didn’t get corporate bailouts. “That’s stuff’s terrible for people,” he said. “That’s one thing I had to give up because it does disconnect you from reality in many ways. I think a lot of the weird perversion we see coming out now at this point —I even reference some of it in the song, of course, but you read about a lot of the weird things people are doing that maybe wouldn’t have been accepted 100 years ago. People go down these rabbit holes with porn… They start off with the video with the milkman an it’s almost like a drug, people have to keep chasing that thrill, and it takes them down very destructive rabbit holes. I have no issue with anybody watching it, but I hate to read about the things that it does to people, ruins marriages and that kind of thing.”
Elsewhere, when drug companies advertising on television came up, Anthony lamented that he “went on a run with SSRIs” and the side effects were more powerful than any of the benefits.
“I think there’s alternatives to pharmacy medicine in a lot of cases, maybe even if it’s just habits,” he said. “It’s OK to prescribe a medication to keep somebody on course. For example, I’ve got a relative of mine, I won’t call him out, but he won’t change the way he eats at all, but he’ll take whatever medications every day to keep the diabetes away and keep his blood pressure low and all that. But there should be more integration of, ‘Hey, maybe this is a plan of what you should do to go alone with this medicine.’ They don’t want you to get off the medicine, though. If anything they want you to keep taking it. It’s weird.”
The long conversation is available to listen to here, and you can watch a clip below:
