A singer of the country-folk genre, Lunsford adopted his grandfather's name "Oliver Anthony" as his stage name in homage to the Depression era in which he lived.
Anthony started writing music in 2021, and since 2022 has released music as Oliver Anthony Music.Winston Marshall compared Anthony's performance on his song "Doggonit" —a song which contrasts consumption of insect protein and self-driving cars with Anthony's rural abode— to that of a character from Hillbilly Elegy. His music has been influenced by Hank Williams.
He said he "started getting messages from people saying how much the music was helping them with their struggles in their lives", and that that gave him a purpose. "It made me feel like I wasn't just wasting my time." Anthony had been struggling with mental health issues and alcohol abuse for five years, and according to Twitter user Jason Howerton who had interviewed him, in July 2023 Anthony broke down and promised God that he would get sober if he helped him follow his dream. Around 30 days later, West Virginia music channel radiowv asked him to record a song for its YouTube music channel, and the result was "Rich Men North of Richmond".
Anthony performed a free show at a farmers market in Barco, North Carolina, on August 13, which Anthony opened with the reading of verses from Psalm 37 about evildoers. He was joined by surprise guest Jamey Johnson. That same month, six other Anthony songs ranked in the iTunes top 20, with five of the others in the top 10, including "I've Got to Get Sober", which reached No. 3 on the Apple platform.
"Aint Gotta Dollar", a song about self-reliance without spending money, and ranked Anthony's fourth best by Taste of Country, reached number 1 on the Viral 50 list in Spotify and No. 2 on iTunes. Anthony said that members of the public had reached out to tell him that the song had connected with them powerfully.
In a Facebook post on August 17, Anthony described what he believes to be the reasons for his popularity: "I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they're being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit. Just some idiot and his guitar."
Anthony's second documented public concert, in Moyock, North Carolina, opened in what Billboard described as "a unique fashion", with him reading a passage from the Bible.