Latest on 'Try That in a Small Town' controversy, from sales spikes and parody songs to boycott campaigns and Twitter wars: 'It's been a long-ass week,' says 'proud American' Jason Aldean

On July 17, Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” video, which was filmed at the site of a 1927 lynching of a Black teenager, was pulled from CMT rotation amid accusations that it promotes racism and vigilante violence. And one week later, the controversy has hardly died down. Over the past seven days, some irate Aldean fans have called for a CMT boycott, saying the network has “murdered its own brand.” Various public figures, from Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell to Donald Trump and Ted Nugent, have weighed in, and the song and video have inspired dozens of op-eds and think pieces. Over the weekend, Aldean himself addressed the backlash onstage, for an audience that unsurprisingly was very much on his side.

Last week on Twitter, the 46-year-old country star said claims that “Small Town” is racist were “not only meritless, but dangerous,” and while performing July 21 at Cincinnati’s Riverbend Music Center, he doubled down on that defense. “I gotta tell you guys, man, it's been a long-ass week,” Aldean began. “It's been a long week, and I've seen a lot of stuff. I've seen a lot of stuff suggesting I'm this, suggesting I'm that. Here's the thing, here's one thing I feel: I feel like everybody's entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to, doesn't mean it's true, right? What I am is a proud American. I'm proud to be from here. I love our country; I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bullshit started happening to us. I love our country, I love my family, and I will do anything to protect that. I'll tell you that right now."

In fan-shot video circulating on social media, the Riverbend Music Center crowd can be seen shouting, “U.S.A., U.S.A!” as Aldean continued: “I know a lot of you guys grew up like I did. You kind of have the same values, the same principles that I have, which is we want to take our kids to a movie and not worry about some asshole coming in there shooting up the theater. So somebody asked me, ‘Hey man, you think you’re going to play this song tonight?’ The answer was simple. The people have spoken and you guys spoke very, very loudly this week.”

Aldean also decried “cancel culture,” griping, “If people don’t like what you say, they try to make sure they can cancel you, which means try to ruin your life, ruin everything. One thing I saw this week was a bunch of country music fans that can see through a lot of the bullshit. I saw country music fans rally like I’ve never seen before, and it was pretty badass to watch. I gotta say. Thank you guys so much.”

“Try That in a Small Town” was released as a single in May, but controversy surrounding the what some critics have described as a “modern lynching song” escalated on July 14, when Aldean released the “Small Town” music video accompanied by a statement about yearning to “get back” to a “sense of community and respect” that has “gotten lost.” The video inspired many scathing critiques, including the Variety op-ed “Jason Aldean Already Had the Most Contemptible Country Song of the Decade. The Video Is Worse,” National Review’s “Jason Aldean Isn’t Helping,” Rolling Stone’s “Here’s What’s Wrong With Jason Aldean’s Vision of America,” MSNBC’s “Jason Aldean Almost Got Away With It,” and CNN’s “Jason Aldean: Ignorant or Just Full of Crap?”

As the above articles noted, Aldean’s incendiary video was filmed outside the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn. — where in 1927 an 18-year-old Black man named Henry Choate, who had been accused of assaulting a 16-year-old white girl, was hanged from a second-story window after being kidnapped from his jail cell by an angry white lynch mob and dragged across town from the back of a car. A representative for the production company that worked on the “Try That in a Small Town” music video, TackleBox, clarified to Yahoo Entertainment that the video’s “popular filming location outside of Nashville” had not been chosen by Aldean.

However, some TikTok sleuths have claimed that Aldean had an agenda with the video, aside from the courthouse location, with regards to its interspersed news footage of what appeared to be 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, flag burnings, lootings and police attacks. Aldean had tweeted that “there isn't a single video clip that isn't real news footage” in his video, but content creator and activist Destinee Stark pointed out that much of that footage was not actually filmed in the United States. Stark claimed that one scene of a woman flipping protesters the bird is a clip from Germany being sold as stock footage, while another is allegedly from a 2013 protest in Ukraine. Rolling Stone additionally reported that another clip seems to be from the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto.

“So, the consensus of Aldean's video is that he's protecting his small community from rioters and protesters protesting the police, you would think he would actually use footage actually from America,” Stark stated on TikTok. “You know, it would be difficult to protect your small town in America from a festival taking place in Berlin, Germany.” (Another TikTok user by the handle dannyfcollins also argued that even Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” lyric video, which was released May 19, had a “hidden message,” claiming that that earlier promo glorified a 1956 attack on anti-segregationist reporter, P.D. East, who “challenged the Southern racist establishment” in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. “[East] was ostracized from community, was spat on, he was threatened with violence… because he tried that in a small town,” Collins posted.)

Crow was among the first celebrities to put “Try That in a Small Town” on blast. Along with the accusations of racism, Aldean, who witnessed the worst gun massacre in U.S. history at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, has also caught flak for the song’s seemingly pro-gun lyrics, which celebrate “good ol’ boys raised right” who “take care of their own.” Crow, who in 1996 had her second album banned from Walmart due to the anti-gun lyrics in “Love Is a Good Thing,” tweeted last week, “I’m from a small town. Even people in small towns are sick of violence. There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence. You should know that better than anyone having survived a mass shooting.”

Other country artists who voiced their anti-Aldean opinions were rising Americana star Adeem the Artist, who went viral in his own right with the parody song “Sundown Town,” and Margo Price, who reposted a Guardian story about Aldean wearing blackface in 2015 and wrote: “Just popping on here to say Jason Aldean is a clown.” Jason Isbell, who has never shied away from expressing his liberal views on social media, fanned the flames with a series of tweets: “Dare Aldean to write his next single himself. That’s what we try in my small town," he wrote. "I’m challenging you to write a song yourself. All alone. If you’re a recording artist, make some art. I want to hear it. … Seriously, how do you defend the content of a song you weren’t even in the room for? You just got it from your producer. If you’d been there when it was written, you’d be listed as a writer. We all know how this works.” Isbell was pointing out that Aldean’s single was actually penned by Kurt Allison, Tully Kennedy, Kelley Lovelace, and Neil Thrasher.

Isbell’s tweets sparked the ire of one of Aldean’s high-profile supporters, country star Jake Owen, who tweeted back, “Jason, you’re always the first to get behind your keyboard and spout off with this stupid shit. In ‘my small town’ you just walk up to the guy and be a man to his face if you want the smoke… not tweet it at him…. Tough guy.” Isbell countered, “What really gets me about this is that it’s saying ‘if you don’t believe you can physically overpower me, you aren’t allowed to publicly disagree with me.’ What does that say to the people in your life who aren’t big strong boys? They just have to shut up?”

Other Aldean defenders included noted conservative country stars Travis Tritt, Big & Rich’s John Rich and “God Bless the U.S.A.” singer Lee Greenwood. Tritt tweeted, “IMO, this song isn’t promoting violence as some have suggested. It is simply expressing a point of view that many American people share which is against the obvious violence that we have seen from the likes of so many ‘activists groups’ in this country in recent years and the belief shared by millions that this behavior would not be tolerated by many people in many places across the USA. God bless America and all the people in it.” In an interview on Jesse Watters Primetime, Greenwood called Aldean “the biggest patriot, like a lot of us” and said Aldean’s song “has nothing to do with racism. This is about people trying to take away the freedom of expression. It is a great song. I wish I had it.”

Cody Johnson also declared onstage in St. Louis, “If being patriotic makes you an outlaw, then by God, I'll be an outlaw. … We live in a time where everyone gets pissed off at Jason Aldean for putting out a song. If you’re videoing this, and Jason Aldean if you’re seeing this video, you keep it up, brother. You do you, boo boo.” At his own recent concert, Luke Bryan introduced “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Everyday” with: “Wanna send this one out to my buddy Jason Aldean.” (Contrary to reports circulating online, Bryan has not pulled his videos from CMT in protest; neither have Hank Williams Jr., Blake Shelton, or any other country artists as of this writing.)

Outside of the country genre, pot-stirring rocker Nugent went on Fox News over the weekend to defend Aldean, saying: “The idiots hate this Jason Aldean song because they hate when we push back against violence. They always get it 180 degrees wrong. This song is against violence. The song is about self-defense. The song is about protecting your loved ones in your neighborhood. If you find fault with a song that celebrates protecting your loved ones, your neighborhood, you might be going down to Target to the Satan display and get down on your knees. These are just weird people. We dismiss them because they’ve gotten out of hand because they’ve got no soul. I laugh in their face.”

Nugent’s friend Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, “Jason Aldean is a fantastic guy who just came out with a great new song. Support Jason all the way. MAGA!!!” Other pro-Aldean politicians have included GOP presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem, Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, with the latter two playing “Try That in a Small Town” at recent campaign events. Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones was one politician who voiced disapproval, tweeting, “As Tennessee lawmakers, we have an obligation to condemn Jason Aldean’s heinous song calling for racist violence. What 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.”

Blanco Brown, a Black country singer signed to the same label as Aldean, BBR Music Group, also spoke up for Aldean, albeit with more mixed feelings than most Aldean supporters. “Aldean’s Stream Are Gonna Go Through The Roof … I hate the words to that song but I don’t believe he’s a racist, one of the first to check on me in my time of need,” Brown wrote in a since-deleted tweet, referring to his near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2020.

Brown’s prediction was indeed correct. Much like the controversy and subsequent “cancelation” surrounding Morgan Wallen’s use of racial slur in 2021 seemed to do nothing to derail that country superstar’s career, controversy seems to have only boosted Aldean’s profile. Last week, “Small Town” jumped to the No. 1 spot on Apple Music’s Top Songs and Music Videos charts, and since then streams for the song have spiked nearly 1,000%, from 987,000 to 11.7 million, and sales have increased from 1,000 to 228,000 units, according to music industry tracker Luminate. The day that CMT pulled the “Try That in a Small Town” video, it had 424,000 views; a week later, it has racked up 16 million and counting.