Ty Rickert

There has already been a lot of ink spilled about this song but I still feel compelled to comment. I'm hesitant to do so because I hate seeing beautiful art dragged into the culture war arena but since it's inevitable anyways, here I go... Aside from being one of the most heartfelt songs ever written, to me, it speaks to the part of America that feels forgotten. The blue collar laborer that gets demonized despite only wanting to be left alone. The kind that only ever wanted to focus on family and God. The kind that gets no Hollywood representation as it doesn't check a DEI box. The kind that news anchors derisively describe as "flyover country". The kind that understands how broken and corrupt this system is, so much so that most voted for Trump just because they wanted to say fuck you to all of it. It isn't polished, it isn't focus grouped, it isn't overtly political. It is American. It speaks to the soul of this country. A soul that most DC elites had thought, and hoped, had been extinguished. Oliver Anthony breatged life back into it. For that, they will attempt to paint he, and it, as something worthy of derision. But in truth, it is beauty, it is art, it is an ode to America, the real America and you cannot convince us otherwise