Now that country music star Oliver Anthony has hit millions of playlists across America, Edwin Snowden said he probably made a different type of list as well.
Snowden is the polarizing National Security Administration whistleblower who revealed the United States was keeping files on its own citizens through a vast network of snooping. Snowden is currently living in Russia, as he is wanted by the U.S., but connected to America enough to know about Anthony’s rise to fame.
“After hitting topping the iTunes list and tweeting like this, the FBI will be making space for him another kind of list, too,” Snowden tweeted.
“Think I’m kidding? The FBI had a file on John Denver for attending one anti-war protest. They’re gonna keep making lists — until they’re made to stop,” Snowden added, citing a post from Anthony that read “You weren’t born to just pay the bills and die.”
The post hit a clear nerve on social media.
According to the Washington Examiner, the FBI kept a file on Denver after he showed up at a “Dump the War Rally” in Minnesota in 1971, during the Vietnam War.
According to Rolling Stone magazine, the FBI’s list of famous musicians it has kept tabs on includes Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Sam Cooke, Richie Havens, the Monkees, Grateful Dead, Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Robin Gibb, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain.
In his hit song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Anthony made an allusion to efforts to control others by way of snooping.
“Lord knows they all just wanna have total control; Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do; And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do,” the song goes, according to the website AZ Lyrics.
In a recent YouTube video, Anthony said he does not want his music linked to partisan politics.
“The one thing that has bothered me is seeing people wrap politics up into this,” Anthony said.
“It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them,” he said.
“It’s aggravating seeing certain musicians and politicians act like we’re buddies and act like we’re fighting the same struggle here, like that we’re trying to present the same message,” he said.
He said it was “funny seeing my song at the [GOP] presidential debate.”
“It’s like, I wrote that song about those people. For them to have to sit there and listen to it, that cracks me up,” he said.
“That song is written about the people on that stage, and a lot more, too,” he said.
Anthony has since had to clarify that he is, unequivocally, also not a Biden supporter.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.