Country singer Jason Aldean has come under fire, metaphorically speaking at least, due to the lyrics of his new song, "Try That in a Small Town." The song describes "good old boys" who "take care of their own" and won't tolerate disrespect of the police or the American flag, and draws a clear line between small-town America, which it purports are populated by proud owners of guns which they won't give up, and big cities where it is suggested that unpatriotic lawlessness rules.
Much of the iconography of the song will be familiar to anyone who has listened to a country music radio station, although some of the specifics have been deemed distasteful by listeners. Specifically, the pro-gun message of "Try That in a Small Town" is being questioned because Aldean was present at the mass shooting at the Route 91 music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017.
While "Try That in a Small Town" was released on May 19, the controversy surrounding the song arose on July 14, after Aldean put out an accompanying music video.
"When u grow up in a small town, it’s that unspoken rule of 'we all have each other’s backs and we look out for each other,'" Aldean explained in a tweet promoting the music video. "It feels like somewhere along the way, that sense of community and respect has gotten lost. Deep down we are all ready to get back to that."
Aldean added that he hopes the music video for "Try That in a Small Town" makes people feel less alone in wanting to go back to that way of life—although his choice of location for the video, the site of the public murder of a Black man, did not go unnoticed.
"Jason Aldean shot this at 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," wrote journalist Ashton Pittman on Twitter. "That's where Aldean chose to sing about murdering people who don't respect police."
While some believed the video for "Try That in a Small Town" highlighted the racial undertones of the song, turning uncomfortable subtext into actual text, others found the entire sensibility of the song to be lacking in classic country authenticity: a number of commentators have pointed out that Aldean is singing a small-town anthem despite the fact that he actually hails from the city of Macon, Georgia and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Author Matthew Chapman wrote that "this song absolutely captures everything about the American Right, from the paranoid threats of violence, to the irrational fetishization of communities where everyone acts and thinks the same, to the fact that the singer in fact grew up in a city."
"If country singers want to sing the praises of small towns, and about how life is quieter and simpler compared to living in the city, that’s obviously their right," wrote Brian Richards for Pajiba. "But when your praise of small towns involves fearmongering, and encouraging white people to lash out and go after anyone who looks or sounds differently than they do with guns, and with bills being signed into law, you deserve whatever smoke you get."
He added: "The mass shootings that keep happening over and over and over again in this country... They mostly happen in small towns."
As the conversation around "Try That in a Small Town" was gathering heat, so, too was Aldean: The singer ran off stage mid-performance on July 16 due to heat exhaustion, and is currently recovering.
Philip Ellis is Sex & Relationships Editor at Men's Health, and author of the novels We Could Be Heroes and Love & Other Scams. His other work has appeared in Teen Vogue, British GQ, and The Independent.
