‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Tells Fox News: ‘What Makes Us Strong is Our Diversity’

Breakout music star Oliver Anthony used his first Fox News appearance to break with “corporate media” efforts to divide people instead of bringing people together.

Anthony burst onto the country music scene with his hit song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which, according to Variety, makes him the first artist to ever have a Number One debut on the Billboard Hot 100 chart without having any kind of prior history on the chart. The song has been celebrated by right-wing pundits, it received days of publicity from Fox News, and Fox & Friends’ imploring for an appearance led to Griff Jenkins covering Anthony’s public reception at a free concert he did over the weekend in North Carolina.

Asked what prompted him to write “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Anthony said it was based on “common struggles” other people identify with. When asked if he was “surprised” by the public response, Anthony explained, “It resonates with the suffering in the world right now, even in our own country.”

We’ve had years of people feeling depressed and hopeless and every time you look at the TV or get online, everything is negative. I think people are just desperate for something positive again. There’s been a lot of people dying for us to stand on this Earth and do what it is we do every day, and we should be excited for it.

In terms of what he wants, Anthony told Jenkins, “Just people to start appreciating each other for human beings and look beyond political differences and ideologies and a lot of the things that I see corporate media and education doing, which is making everyone identify each other’s differences and not as similarities.”

I want people to appreciate each other and appreciate the struggles and hopefully find the energy that was in the song and manifest it in their own personal lives. Just trying to find similarities with each other instead of division. That’s really all I want.

I don’t see our country lasting more than another generation the way we are headed. We have to go back to the roots of what made this country great in the first place, which was our sense of community. We are the melting pot of the world, and that’s what makes us strong is our diversity. We need to learn to harness that and appreciate it and not use it as a political tool to keep everyone separate from each other.

Watch above via Fox News.