The controversy over Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is getting bigger by the day.
The cable network Country Music Television (CMT) has pulled the new music video to Aldean’s song as backlash mounted against both its filming location—a famous lynching site—and its lyrical content. As one might have predicted, all of our loudest conservative luminaries—your Lauren Boeberts and Kevin Sorbos and Roseanne Barrs—have already come out of the woodwork to offer their outraged two cents. Meanwhile, TMZ reports that “Try That in a Small Town,” released in May, recently began climbing the Amazon and iTunes charts.
Meanwhile, fellow country singer Sheryl Crow spoke out against Aldean’s song on Tuesday, tweeting at him, “I’m from a small town. Even people in small towns are sick of violence.”
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“There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence,” Crow continued. “You should know that better than anyone having survived a mass shooting. This is not American or small town-like. It’s just lame.”
In his song, Aldean sings lines like, “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and light it up / Yeah, ya think you’re tough / Well, try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / Around here we take care of our own.” Another: “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck.”
Viewers have also noted that Aldean’s music video was filmed at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee—where a white mob lynched a Black man named Henry Choate in 1927. Nineteen years later, the courthouse also became the site of 1946’s Columbia Race Riot. (According to USA Today, TackleBox—the company that produced Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” video—has said that he did not pick the courthouse as a location and pointed out that a number of productions, including a Hannah Montana film, have shot there.)
There’s some irony to the song’s nostalgia for small-town life, given that Aldean himself famously grew up in Macon, Georgia—whose estimated population was over 156,000 as of 2022. In 1970, seven years before Aldean was born, the city’s population clocked in at over 122,000, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting—a number that reportedly dwindled for a time due to a number of factors including integration and white flight.
The song’s lyrics are also surprising because Aldean himself survived a mass shooting in 2017 during the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas. Fifty-eight people died during that shooting, making it the deadliest in modern U.S. history at the time.
Aldean responded to the controversy on Twitter on Tuesday and called the idea that his song is pro-lynching “not only meritless, but dangerous.”
The singer added that there is “not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it- and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage -and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music- this one goes too far. ...NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.”
Shannon Watts, founder of the grassroots public safety organization Moms Demand Action, quote-tweeted Aldean’s statement along with an image of his lyrics, writing, “This song is an ode to a sundown town, suggesting people be beaten or shot for expressing free speech. It also insinuates that guns are being confiscated, the penalty for which is apparently death. Aldean was on stage when 60 of his fans were shot to death and 400+ were wounded.”
State legislator Justin Jones (D-TN) also sounded off hours after Aldean published his statement. “As Tennessee lawmakers, we have an obligation to condemn Jason Aldean’s heinous song calling for racist violence,” the lawmaker tweeted Tuesday, calling the song “a shameful vision of gun extremism and vigilantism.”
“We will continue to call for common sense gun laws that protect ALL our children and communities,” Jones added.
In his statement, Aldean said that “Try That in a Small Town” is meant to reflect “the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief. Because they were our neighbors, and that was above any differences.”
As Aldean’s statement also notes, he’s never “hidden from” his political views. Last January, the singer and his wife, Brittany, rang in the new year with “the G.O.A.T.” Donald Trump. In 2015, a representative for the singer explained a photo that had resurfaced of him in blackface by telling The Guardian he’d “dressed as rapper Lil Wayne” for Halloween. And less than a year ago, he was feuding with country singer Maren Morris because of the anti-trans comments Brittany Aldean (whom Morris memorably nicknamed “Insurrection Barbie”) had made online.
“I know that a lot of us in this Country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night,” Aldean’s statement concluded. “But the desire for it to- that’s what this song is about.”
At this point, the furor surrounding Aldean’s song doesn’t appear to be dying down anytime soon. Representatives for The Grand Ole Opry—which is set to include Aldean in a benefit concert for The Covenant School next month—did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment about his involvement. Meanwhile, reporter Ryan Deto has pointed out perhaps the only truly amusing contradiction in Aldean’s latest single.
“The funniest thing about the Jason Aldean controversy,” Deto wrote on Twitter, “is that he also released a song in 2019 called “Rearview Town” about how he defiantly left a small town because it sucked.”
