Country music star Jason Aldean slammed critics for calling his hit ‘Try That In a Small Town’ a ‘lynching song’ – claiming there were ‘people of all color’ in his music video that featured BLM riots.
Aldean, 46, defended the song and music video in his first network news interview about the controversy.
‘There was people of all color doing stuff in the video. That’s what I don’t understand,’ he told CBS News. ‘There was white people in there. There was black people. I mean, this video did not shine light on one specific group and say, ‘That’s the problem.’
‘And anybody that saw that in the video, then you weren’t looking hard enough in the video, is all I can tell you.’
The song faced severe backlash over the summer for its controversial music video and lyrics, which interlaced clips of BLM protestors vandalizing cities with lyrics endorsing traditional values, such as ‘taking care of our own.’
Country music star Jason Aldean slammed critics for calling his hi t ‘Try That In a Small Town’ a ‘lynching song’ – claiming there were ‘people of all color’ in his music video that featured BLM riots (Aldean is pictured at the CMA Fest 2022 in Nashville, Tenn., on June 9, 2022)
In the music video, Aldean sings before large white property and an American flag interlaced with clips of BLM protests
Critics accused the track of glorifying violence and fueling racism, but Aldean denied the song has any racist connotation.
The video was shot in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee – the site of a 1927 mob lynching of an 18-year-old black man named Henry Choate and the site of a race riot in 1946.
Regarding the controversial location, Aldean said, ‘I don’t go back a hundred years and check on the history of a place before we go shoot it either.’
‘It’s also the place that I go get my car tags every year. It’s my county that I live in.’
Aldean also said that in the South, it would be nearly impossible to film in a location that did not involve some racial issue at some point in history.
‘I don’t feel bad about that because I know my intentions behind, you know, shooting the video there and recording the song and everything,’ he said.
‘I would do it over again, every time … minus the setting, knowing what I know now, obviously, you know, knowing that that was gonna be a thing, you know, maybe you look at doing it somewhere else,’ he said.
As well as the video, Aldean has been criticized for the lyrics of the song that suggest small town ‘good ol’ boys’ will use the ‘gun that my granddad gave me’ on carjackers and robbers – but also those who ‘cuss out a cop’ and ‘stomp on the flag and light it up.’
Many have also pointed out the apparent contradiction from Aldean whose lyrics appear to promote gun ownership and vigilantism despite the singer’s 2017 concert being one of history’s deadliest mass shootings – where 61 people were gunned down and more than 400 were wounded.
‘I know what the intentions were behind the location, the video, the song, all of it. And, you know, and I stand by all that,’ he told CBS.
‘My pregnant wife was there. Our fans were there watching the show,’ he said. ‘All hell breaks loose and you’re not prepared, you know, it’s like, ‘I got a guitar, what am I gonna do?”
‘I do think it makes you look at things a little different when you go through something like that,’ he added.
Aldean never expected his song to spark such controversy. He told CBS that if anything, he thought he would receive heat for mentioning the word ‘gun’.
‘I thought was gonna be the biggest issue with the song was that it said gun,’ Aldean said to CBS, referring to the lyrics, ‘Got a gun that my grandad gave me. They say one day they’re gonna round up.’
‘So, I didn’t expect it to get the kind of heat that it got,’ he said. ‘And I think that was more probably because of the video, more so than the actual song.’
When not showing footage of BLM protests, Aldean was seen in the divisive music video singing in front of a large white property
The song made repeated references to BLM protests. Pictured: NYPD officers block the entrance of the Manhattan Bridge as protests erupted in New York City on June 2, 2020
The setting for Aldean’s video was deemed provocative: Aldean’s team said they were unaware of the history
Jason Aldean’s video for ‘Try That in a Small Town’ shows a flag being burnt during BLM protests
In July, Aldean defended his controversial hit song at a Boston show, claiming that it’s not about race.
He told the audience at the Mansfield Xfinity Center on Saturday night that they can relate to the song because of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, a terrorist attack that resulted in three deaths and left more than 260 injured.
Aldean said the ‘Boston Strong’ mentality – a term used to describe the unity around the city after the bombings – is in sync with the song’s message.
‘You guys get this better than anybody, right?’ he asked the crowd, in video footage shared on Twitter.
What happened was a whole – not a small town – a big a** town coming together, no matter your color, no matter nothing.’
He added: ‘This is not about race.
‘It’s about people getting their s*** together and acting right.’
The previous night at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Aldean defended the song by arguing that critics want to turn it into ‘something that it wasn’t,’ according to PennLive.
He referred to the six seconds of footage, including Black Lives Matter protest scenes, that he said was removed for legal reasons from the video.
‘Everybody can look at it from a different angle,’ Aldean told the crowd on Friday.
‘But just because six seconds were taken out, doesn’t change what I was trying to say in the video.’
‘I don’t give a damn what color you are, or who you are,’ he added.
The song’s lyrics open with descriptions of various violent acts.
The song skyrocketed to no.2 in the Billboard Hot 100 at the time, following controversy over its music video.
Aldean posted on Twitter to celebrate releasing his new song to the public on July 14
The controversial song sat just behind BTS’s Jung Kook solo single ‘Seven,’ featuring Latto. The track experienced the biggest sales week for a country song in over ten years.
According to Luminate, ‘Try That in a Small Town’ hit 11.7 million on-demand audio and video streams between July 14 and 20, marking a 1,000 percent increase from the previous week.
Prior to the music video release on July 14, the track accounted for 987,000 streams in the U.S.
Digital song sales increased from 1,000 to 228,000, in those same weeks, respectively.
The music video for the song lasted just one weekend on Country Music Television before the network pulled it in response to an outcry over its setting and lyrics. When the network removed the video from its rotation, it had 350,000 views on YouTube.
Now that number is now over 16 million, and was the No. 1 trending video under the ‘music’ category.
Aldean – who has been awarded country music artist of the decade by the Academy of Country Music – continues to receive fervent criticism online for the video, with some claiming the visual is a ‘dog whistle’ and others labeling it ‘pro-lynching.’
‘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,’ Aldean wrote in a tweet posted in July.