Proudly right-wing country star Jason Aldean was quick to comment on Saturday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump, dedicating his highly controversial song “Try That in a Small Town” to the former president during a concert in Nashville. The song and particularly its video have been accused or bearing racist overtones.
Aldean, who has long been a vocal Trump supporter, told the audience, “President Trump’s a friend of mine so I want to send this next song out to him. We all know what’s going to happen come November, so it’s all good,” he said to cheers, referencing the upcoming presidential election. “Just goes to show you there’s a lot of bullshit in the world, and that’s kind of what this song right here was about, so this one goes out to the pres.” Aldean also posted a reverent message for the former president on his Instagram account.
The singer’s choice of a song to dedicate to the former president was no accident: “Try That in a Small Town” has been accused of featuring lyrics that were pro-gun and pro-violence, and the accompanying music video was filmed in front of a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where a Black man was lynched in the 1920s. The clip, which was described by some detractors as a “modern lynching song” and was pulled from rotation by CMT, also included footage of rallies, looting and riots directed at police officers. The controversy led the song to top the Billboard Hot 100.
Aldean has defiantly claimed that the song is not racist and that he wasn’t previously aware of the building’s history, but was defensive about his choice, claiming that most courthouses in the American South have racist histories.
“I’m not going to go back 100 years and check on the history of this building,” he told “CBS Mornings” last October. “Honestly, if you’re in the south, you could probably go to any smalltown courthouse, and be hard-pressed to find one that hasn’t had a racial issue over the years at some point. That’s a fact.”
He also defended his video by saying, “There was people of all color doing stuff in the video. That’s what I don’t understand. You know, there was white people in there. There was Black people. I mean, this video did not shine light on one specific group and say, that’s the problem. So anybody that saw that in the video, then you weren’t looking hard enough in the video is all I can tell you.”
