Jason Aldean Relates 'Small Town' Song to Boston Marathon Bombing: 'You Guys Would Get This Better Than Anybody'
Country star Jason Aldean came to the big town Saturday night and said if there was anywhere in the world that understood his song “Try That in a Small Town,” it would be Boston.
“I was laying in bed last night and thinking to myself, you guys would get this better than anybody, right?” Aldean said during his Saturday concert at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, just south of Boston.
“Because I remember a time, I think it was April of 2013, when the Boston Marathon bombings happened. You guys remember this, right?
“What I saw when that happened was, not a small town — a big a– town — come together,” he said as the audience cheered.
“The whole country, especially Boston, came together to find these two pr—- that did that. Any of you guys that would’ve found those guys before the cops did, I know you guys from Boston, and you guys would’ve beat the s— out of [them],” he said.
@Jason_Aldean references the Boston Marathon bombings in his show in Mansfield MA. Try that in a small town. #damright #country #Boston #mapoli pic.twitter.com/CZbX8BD8h2
— Brian Sullivan (@briansulldog) July 30, 2023
He said his song is “not about race. It’s about people getting their s— together, acting right. You’re hearing from the person that made the record. Everybody is trying to tell you what I meant. They don’t know what I meant,” he said.
“What I meant is exactly what I just told you. We are a country, the greatest one in the world. I know you guys are like me. You want to be able to send your kids to school and not have to worry about something happening while they’re at school,” he added.
“To me, that’s not a racial issue. I don’t give a s— what color you are. If you’re acting out, burning down buildings, costing taxpayers all this money, just for you to go and show that you’re pissed off, to me, I just don’t get that. We’re just never going to see eye to eye about that s—,” he said.
“I want to thank you guys so much. You guys saw what was trying to happen here the last couple of weeks.
“A lot of people wanted nothing more than for this song to be something that it wasn’t, wanted you guys to turn on me and think that I was something that I wasn’t,” he said.
“It makes me very proud, the fact that all you guys can see that and go, ‘Nuh-uh, not this time.’ You guys took this song and the video and you guys have made this thing one of the biggest things I’ve ever had in my career. Thank you guys for hearing the song, seeing the video, watching it with an open mind, seeing what it was about,” he said.
In a Pennsylvania stop on his tour, Aldean confronted head-on the allegations that the song promotes lynchings and has racist overtones.
“I don’t give a damn what color you are, or who you are,” he told an audience at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania, according to Penn Live, the website of the Patriot-News of Harrisburg.
Aldean also had a request of those following the controversy over the song.
“When you guys are reading articles, I ask you not to just read the headline,” he said, according to Penn Live.
“Go all the way through, read, and get the facts straight. Everybody is so quick to cancel everybody. ‘Oh he did this, they did that,’ whatever. Just do your homework, read the article and not just the headline.
“Get all of the information before making your opinion.”
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