If you don’t follow Country Music, you may not have heard about Jason Aldean’s new single, “Try That in a Small Town.” Critics (like me) have pointed out the lyrics and video may have well led him to instead title the song “Sundown Town,” because they reference “good ol’ boys, raised up right… looking for a fight [if you] try that [e.g. cussing out cops, burning a flag] in a small town.”
The controversy has led CMT (the country music channel) to pull the very popular song from their airwaves. Expect the deMAGAgues to crank up the Wurlitzer to Dylan Mulvaney levels to cancel CMT now. It’s also led Aldean to issue a statement via Elon Musk’s Nazi Pub Newsletter:
In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. 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.
@Jason_Aldean on Twitter
When Jason Aldean says “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,” it’s like noting that the White Power symbol is just an OK sign and that All Lives Matter.
This is how so many of the Gen-X White guys I grew up with reconcile that they aren’t racist, when they are. It’s a kind of self-gaslighting.
Guys like this (let’s call them “Aldeans”) don’t think they’re racist, because they know and work with Black or Hispanic guys (let’s say Charley Pride and Freddy Fender).
But those guys they know are what the Aldeans would call “assimilated.” They behave in a “small town” manner, which, unknown to the Aldeans, is a huge effort of code switching and tongue biting that the Charleys and Freddys in the town working alongside the Aldeans have been practicing since childhood so they wouldn’t be perceived as “one of those.” (Chris Rock had a whole routine, “Black folks and N…..,” that he doesn’t do anymore, because while Black folks got the joke, Aldeans took it as justification from a Black guy that, yes, there are some “good ones” and the rest are “N…..”)
Ironically, Jason Aldean actually seems to have an inkling of this phenomenon. In a tribute he wrote in 2020 on the passing of Black country legend Charley Pride, he wrote “I can’t imagine what this man went through as a Black Country Music artist trying to break into this business.” Well, Charley Pride was a Negro Leagues baseball pitcher in the 1950s (and played minor league ball in Boise), so we know he went through racial segregation. His mother spoke of being refused service in restaurants while he grew up in Helena, Montana, so he experienced racial discrimination. We know when his career began in the 1960s, promoters would not include his photograph in the promotional materials for fear of offending country Whites. We know that in 1971 when he won both CMA’s Entertainer and Male Vocalist of the Year, the Associated Press headline was “Pickin’ A Guitar Instead of Cotton Pays Off For Singer Charley Pride.” We know fellow country artists The Statler Brothers in their 1979 hit song “How to Be a Country Star” described Charley Pride’s career success—at that point, dozens of #1 Country singles and albums, a #21 pop hit (“Kiss an Angel Good Morning”), 3 Grammys, 3 CMAs, and 3 AMAs—as a “gimmick.”
So, no, there are no lyrics in “Try That in a Small Town” come right out and says “find some Blacks and string ’em from a tree.” But c’mon, Jason. Really?
The video opens with you and your band playing on the steps of a courthouse at night with the American flag in the background and lights projecting images of mounted cops on horseback. That courthouse, as @ashtonpittman noted, is “the site where a white lynch mob strung Henry Choate up at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., after dragging his body through the streets with a car in 1927.”
About as subtle as Ronald Reagan opening up his 1980 presidential campaign in Mississippi with a speech on states rights near where the three civil rights workers chronicled in “Mississippi Burning” were murdered in 1964, huh?
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
“Try That in a Small Town” by Kelley Lovelace / Neil Thrasher / Tully Kennedy / Kurt Michael Allison
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like
This is how I’m-not-racist self-gaslighting begins. The framing is one of law-and-order. “It’s the sucker-punchers, the carjackers, and the armed robbers I’m against! I didn’t say any of them are Black, White, Latino, or Asian! Could be anybody!”
“Well, goodness, we’re all against criminals, aren’t we? And aren’t you the racist for assuming that I meant Blacks when I sang about assaulters, carjackers, and robbers?” This is how the Aldeans see and hear that music video, and how they see protests like Black Lives Matter. “Yes, it must suck to be Black, but why can’t they be nice like Charley? Why do they have to burn down their cities?”
But soon enough, the video and lyrics let the hood slip a bit. There’s a frame of a young White lady flipping off a row of riot police marching past her just as the lyrics sing “act a fool if you like.”
Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you’re toughWell, try that in a small town
“Try That in a Small Town” by Kelley Lovelace / Neil Thrasher / Tully Kennedy / Kurt Michael Allison
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small town
See how we’ve gotten from criminal acts we all oppose to acts of free speech the Aldeans disagree with? It’s our constitutional right to cuss out cops (spitting in faces is assault, though) and stomp on and burn flags, but do that in the Aldeans’ town and you’ll “find out” what happens.
Again, it’s racist with out being explicitly racial. Because who is it that is cussing out cops and burning flags these days? It’s Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protests, as appear to be seen in some of the clips in the video, unless there were some other “state of emergency,” burning city, riot cop phalanxes scenes in America not related to cops killing Black people that I missed. The editors even did a great job of making sure any clips where faces were visible were not Black ones, so when articles like this call it racist, they can say, “those are White kids in Seattle! LOL!”
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 luckTry that in a small town
“Try That in a Small Town” by Kelley Lovelace / Neil Thrasher / Tully Kennedy / Kurt Michael Allison
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small town
See, the Aldeans all have guns. And they hate it when you cuss out the cops. Because they love them some cops. And some law and order. Unless someday there’s a law against guns and an order to round them up. Then they’ll have to kill some cops. Because who do they think is going to be sent out to collect the guns, Joe Biden, personally?
As so many pointed out, I was present at Route 91-where so many lost their lives- and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy. NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.
@Jason_Aldean on Twitter
Just so long as nobody passes a law against guns and gives an order to round them up, eh, Jason?
Full of good ol’ boys, raised up right
“Try That in a Small Town” by Kelley Lovelace / Neil Thrasher / Tully Kennedy / Kurt Michael Allison
If you’re looking for a fight
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town
Lest you think the Aldeans’ penchant for violence is a bad thing, the middle of the video treats us to convenience store footage of a “good ol’ boy, raised up right” who is exiting the store as two armed robbers enter, the first with a handgun drawn. “See, we’re against crime! We will stand up to it and punch it! And you can’t say we’re racist because those robbers were White!”
“Okay, so there is ONE Black guy being shot by cops in the video. But he was attacking the cop, and the cop is Black, so we’re not racist.”
The rest of the video is clips from various protests and riots as the guitar solos crescendo. Then, as the music softens so do the images, with grainy color film clips of flag raising, backyard flag football, family portraits, hopscotch, and farmers who reach out to help other farmers in need. Good ol’ American goodness, by golly!
Try That In A Small Town, for me, refers to 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. My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and 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. But the desire for it to- that’s what this song is about.
@Jason_Aldean on Twitter
Normalcy, y’know? Like how a video whose first two thirds warned about retributive violence against people who protest police and burn flags ends with a last third promoting everything that is good about America in all-White faces. ‘”Why can’t y’all just love America and respect cops like Charley?”
