Watch: Jason Aldean Won't Back Down to Leftist Reporter Over 'Try That in a Small Town'
Country star Jason Aldean is answering another round of questions from the legacy media about his hit song “Try That in a Small Town.”
And no matter what Aldean says, the liberal media still seem determined to make the song’s message into a racist issue.
Aldean appeared on “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday to talk about the “Highway Desperado” album the song appears on.
The song laments the casual, random and often brutal violence that is becoming increasingly prevalent across America, particularly in liberal-run cities that place criminals’ rights above innocent victims.
The song mentions carjackings, armed robbery and disrespect for law and order, but the chorus proclaims that such behavior is not generally tolerated in small, tight-knit communities where citizens watch out for each other and refuse to look the other way as crimes are committed:
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
Even though “Try That in a Small Town” was released months ago, and it first hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 31, the album it appears on is set for release on Friday.
“Critics say the song and its music video is full of racial undertones and threats of violence,” CBS wrote in the introduction that appeared with a YouTube video of Aldean’s appearance.
CBS host Jan Crawford took that same tone as she confronted Aldean in the interview, which the network said took place at the Nashville studio where the country star recorded the album.
“What was your reaction when you saw people say that this had racist undertones and, you know, it was like a call to arms in small towns?” Crawford asked Aldean.
Aldean was clearly confused. “How?” he asked the host.
“It was a threatening kind of video for black people,” Crawford said. I mean, people were putting this on, like, TikTok.”
Aldean pointed out that there was no particular emphasis on any one race in the music video, though it did include a clip — since deleted over copyright concerns, according to Today — of violent Black Lives Matter protests.
“There was people of all colors doing stuff in the video,” Aldean said. “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.’
“And anybody that saw that in the video, then you weren’t looking hard enough at the video, is all I can tell you.”
The host also made a point of mentioning that the Maury County Courthouse where the video was filmed in Columbia, Tennessee, was the site of the lynching of a black teen in 1927.
Aldean answered that he had no idea a lynching took place there, and he certainly didn’t choose the site for that reason.
“I … don’t go back 100 years and check on the history of a place before we go shoot it,” he told Crawford.
That particular courthouse was chosen primarily, he said, because it’s “the place where I go get my car tags every year. It’s my county that I live in.”
Crawford pressed Aldean, asking if he would shoot the video there again, now that he knows about the lynching nearly 100 years ago.
“Knowing what I know now, probably not,” the star acknowledged.
However, he pointed out, he lives in the South, where such acts took place with widespread frequency during a dark period of the nation’s history.
“You can be hard-pressed to find [a government building] that hasn’t had had some sort of, you know, racial issue over the years at some point,” he said.
“I mean, that’s just a fact.”
Aldean pointed out the whole reason for the song was to decry out-of-control crime and violence.
“The whole idea behind the video was to show the lawlessness and the disrespect for cops and just trashing cities and burning — I’m just not cool with that,” he said.
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