Conservative Fans Tried to Push Jason Aldean to Number One. They Just Missed

Conservatives hoping to drive Jason Aldean’s controversial “Try That in a Small Town” to Number One on the charts following CMT’s move to pull the music video fell just short on Monday, as Jung Kook and Latto’s “Seven” reigned victorious. But the controversy clearly stoked the flames among MAGA circles, giving the song’s sales a major boost last week and propelling the song to Number Two on the chart.

According to data service Luminate, which powers the Billboard charts, “Try That in a Small Town” was garnering fewer than 1,000 sales per week and hovering just shy of a million streams per week in the month prior to when Aldean released the song’s music video on July 14. Immediately, Aldean faced swift backlash, as everyone from fellow artists like Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell to scholars of racial violence pointed out the parallels to white-nationalist narratives in Aldean’s depiction of protests as violent and lawless, and his taunting refrain: “Try that in a small town/See how far ya make it down the road.” CMT pulled the video within a few days, drawing a predictably furious outcry from the right wing — and vows to drive the song up the charts.

More from Rolling Stone

• The Jason Aldean 'Try That in a Small Town' Saga Might Have Another Dog Whistle

• Jason Aldean Addresses 'Small Town' Backlash at Cincinnati Show: 'Cancel Culture Is a Thing'

• Jay Rock, Anderson .Paak, Latto Team Up for Energetic Single 'Too Fast (Pull Over)'

Just last week alone, Aldean’s song earned about 228,000 digital song sales and 11.6 million streams. For reference, the song has 238,000 digital sales all-time, meaning that about 95 percent of the sales came last week, after the controversy started. Fifty-five percent of its nearly 21 million all-time streams came last week, as well.

Aldean faced stiff competition from BTS’s Jung Kook, whose solo track “Seven” featuring Latto ultimately topped the chart this week for its debut. The latter track had 138,000 digital song sales and nearly 24 million streams. Fellow country star Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” one of the year’s biggest tracks, came in at Number Three.

Regardless of where “Small Town” landed on the chart, the track has become yet another dog whistle for conservatives, who have bemoaned the critiques as examples of so-called cancel culture. Right-wing entrepreneur and longshot presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted last week that he’d be playing the song at rallies and encouraged followers to drive the song up the charts. Before doing his best to change the subject to hip-hop, Ramaswamy eagerly echoed the song’s thinly veiled threatening tone: “It’d be a real shame if the song hits #1.”

Other accounts have referenced the Bud Light boycott some conservatives tried to get off the ground after the beer brand partnered with trans TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, or the campaign to boost QAnon-adjacent thriller Sound of Freedom.

Aldean himself has repeatedly dismissed the backlash, denying that “Try That in a Small Town” is a “pro-lynching” song. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it,” he wrote on social media. On Friday night, Aldean addressed the controversy during a concert in Cincinnati, seeming to applaud efforts to cash in on the song’s notoreity.

“You guys know how it is, cancel culture is a thing, it’s something where if people don’t like what you say, they try and make sure they can cancel you, which means try to ruin your life, ruin everything,” Aldean said. “One thing I saw this week was a bunch of country music fans that can see through a lot of the bullshit, all right? I saw country music fans rally like I never seen before, and that was pretty badass, I gotta say. Thank you guys so much.”

Click here to read the full article.