Jason Aldean defended his controversial song and music video “Try That in a Small Town” this week. “If you’ve got common sense, you can look at the video and see, I’m not sayin’ anything that’s not true,” the singer, who has sparked many a controversy, claimed on the podcast Coop’s Rockin’ Country Saturday Night (via Billboard). Regarding the accompanying visual, which depicts imagery of protests, flag burning, and looting, he said, “In the video I’m showin’ you what happened — I didn’t do it, I didn’t create it — it just happened, and I saw it, and I’m not cool with it.”
This summer, backlash to the song and video was swift, especially after news broke that, in the clip, Aldean sang the song in front of a Columbia, Tennessee courthouse where a lynching had taken place in 1927 and where a race riot had occurred in 1946. In the song’s lyrics, he threatens anyone who cusses out a cop or burns flags to “try that in a small town.” “Got a gun that my granddad gave me,” Aldean sings, and brags about how his small town is “full of good ol’ boys, raised up right.”
Aldean has dismissed accusations that the song is in favor of lynching. He later edited out footage of a Black Lives Matter protest from the video.
The song initially came out in May but didn’t attract much attention. It gained traction in July with the release of the video. “The biggest issue, I think, people had when we released the song was that it mentioned ‘having a gun that my grandfather gave me,’” he said on the podcast. “I mentioned a gun, that’s a no, no right now and I just remember thinking, ‘Man, you guys haven’t even seen the video yet.’”
Aldean blamed both mainstream media and social media for the general reaction to the video. “They start making the song and the video into something that it’s not,” he said. “It’s fine, we just live in a world that does that right now, and I’m not gonna go out and explain myself every time somebody gives their own opinion of what my song or video means.”
Regardless of the negative press, the song made it up to Number One on Billboard’s Hot 100 by the end of the month. It’s crowning lasted only a week, after which it fell quickly.