CMT Pulls Jason Aldean’s ‘Try That in a Small Town’ Music Video Amid Backlash

Matt Webb Mitovich
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CMT has dropped from its rotation the music video for Jason Aldean’s new single, “Try That in a Small Town,” after just three days of airplay — and in the wake of backlash that arose over the weekend online.

Aldean in turn tweeted that any claims that the song’s lyrics are “pro-lynching” and/or anti-BLM are “not only meritless, but dangerous.”

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CMT did not give a reason for the music video’s removal, our sister site Billboard reports.

“Try That in a Small Town,” which is from Aldean’s next album, came out in May but drew more attention with the recent release of its music video, which has the singer performing in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn. (It was from the second story of that courthouse that Henry Chaote, an 18-year-old Black man, was notoriously lynched by a mob in 1927, after being accused of attacking a white girl.)

The song’s lyrics, meanwhile, include passages such as:

“Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store…
Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you’re tough
Well, try that in a small town
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”
————-
“Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they’re gonna round up
Well, that [s–t] might fly in the city, good luck
Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own”

Many have speculated that “Try That in a Small Town” was written in response to the 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, where Aldean was performing and where 60 people were killed. In fact, as Aldean — who was born and raised in Macon, Ga. (population 153,000) — notes in his Tuesday tweet, “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.”

Regarding the backlash the video has been met with, he counters, “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.”

Instead, he posits that “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.”

Read Aldean’s complete tweet below, and weigh in.

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