Oliver Anthony had a lot to get off his chest on his new song, “Scornful Woman,” which finds the singer-songwriter venting about his divorce.
If the lyrics of the June-released song are to be taken as autobiographical, Anthony implies that his wife is shaking him down for money amid legal proceedings following the dissolution of their marriage. The Virginia resident has kept his personal life out of the public eye, but it is known that he had a wife and kids when he first blew up in 2023 with “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
“The court says 50/50, but the math don’t seem right with a scornful woman,” Anthony belts on the fiddle-heavy track. “She can have all the money, and they can keep all the fame/ I’d go back to being broke as a joke if I could just get a break from the pain.”
The scorching track arguably speaks for itself, but on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the podcaster — who had Anthony as a guest on his show in 2024 — shared his version of the story behind “Scornful Woman.” “I’ll tell you guys what happened,” Rogan said on the show. “Oliver Anthony has no money. He’s poor, he’s selling farm equipment. He puts this song on YouTube, he’s a f–king superstar. He doesn’t know what to do, he freaks out. He asks me for advice.”
The comedian went on to explain how he urged Anthony not to “sign anything with anybody.”
“I go, ‘You’re independent, you’re already there,’” Rogan continued. “‘You already made it.’ Cut to: He starts making millions of dollars, doing arenas. The wife divorces him, she wants everything. She wants more than half. She wants all the money he’s going to be making in the future, ’cause she was with him when he was broke. He’s just tortured, wants to die. And he writes this song.”
Rogan’s remarks came just before the release of “Scornful Woman,” which Anthony sent to him before it dropped. In a video shared to the musician’s Instagram, the podcaster also praises the track ahead of its release on a different episode of JRE, saying, “That’s what I’m talking about … in the middle of all this honey honey sugar s–t, there’s still Oliver Anthony.”
It’s been nearly two years since Anthony went from unknown to Billboard Hot 100-topping artist in a matter of days. After a video of him performing his independently released single “Rich Men North of Richmond” went mega viral, the ballad debuted at No. 1 on the singles chart, making him the first artist to ever do so without having appeared on it previously.
Listen to “Scornful Woman” below.
