Country music star John Rich, of “Big and Rich” fame, lashed out at his industry this week. In an interview with “Just the News, No Noise” on Thursday, he discussed his recent hit single “Progress” which he made and released without having a major record deal because he could not find one due to his conservative values and beliefs.

“I don’t have the backing of the country music industry really much anymore. And that’s okay. I would rather have my freedom of speech than their approval any day of the week,” he said.

“Within six hours of ‘Progress’ being released on those two platforms, it was the number one song in the world,” Rich said regarding its release on Truth Social and Rumble.

“I decided to not use Twitter, not use Facebook, and not use YouTube, because one of the lines in the song says, ‘They shut down our voices,’” Rich explained. “And by ‘they,’ I mean those platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.”

According to Rich, he wrote the song based on all of his frustrations of what has been happening in the country for the past two years, Just the News reported.

“I would not call that gas price progress,” Rich said. “I would not call the grocery prices progress. I would not call fentanyl in all of our neighborhoods progress. I would not call the border being wide open progress.”

“If that’s progress, they can stick it where the sun don’t shine — which is a really nice PG way of saying you know what,” Rich continued.