“Rich Men North of Richmond,” an independently released track by an unknown performer called Oliver Anthony Music, became a surprise No. 1 song in the United States this week, topping hits by superstars like Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen and Olivia Rodrigo.
The song, which was uploaded to YouTube just two weeks ago, has come under fire from conservative commentators including Matt Walsh and Laura Ingraham, who have described it as a true expression of working-class struggle, though some critics shocked by the anti-welfare sentiments that seem to have returned to Reagan era: “If you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds/Taxes shouldn’t pay for your bags of fudge rounds,” sings Anthony, whose real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford.
“Rich Men” shot to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart with 17.5 million streams and 147,000 downloads, according to tracking service Luminate. After Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” this is the second country song in less than a month to reach No. 1 after stirring political controversy and sparking download sales — a tiny part of the contemporary music business, but one that can have an outsize impact on the charts, thanks to the weighting formulas used by Billboard and Luminate to reconcile streams and sales.
According to Billboardthis is the first time an artist makes a debut at No. 1 on the Hot 100 without any prior chart history “in any form.”
Whether “Rich Man” can hold the top spot for long remains to be seen. When Aldean, a Nashville hitmaker for years, rode a wave of culture war controversy for “Try That in a Small Town” after its music video was criticized as a coded call to vigilantism , the song spent a week at No. it dropped 20 places after streams and downloads fell.
On the album chart, Travis Scott’s “Utopia” holds the No. 1 in the third week, thanks to a flash sale on the rapper’s website that priced the double vinyl version at $5. Scott sold 99,000 copies of his album, 93,000 of which were on vinyl; he also has 124 million streams. In total, “Utopia” was credited with the equivalent of 185,000 sales in the United States, according to Luminate.
Neon-haired Colombian pop star Karol G debuted at No. 3 on his latest release, “Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season),” with the equivalent of 67,000 sales, including 68 million streams. The mixtape is a companion collection to Karol G’s last studio album, the similarly titled “Mañana Será Bonito,” which opened at No. 1 in March.
This week, Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is at No. 2, the “Barbie” soundtrack was No. 4 and Swift’s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” was in fifth place.