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Jason Aldean is not backing down from his stance on defending “Try That in a Small Town” despite the controversy around the song.
In a new interview with CBS Mornings, the country star opened up with Jan Crawford about the backlash the hit song has received.
When Crawford asked Aldean what his reaction was “when you saw people say that this had racist, undertones and you know, it was like a call to arms,” the singer asked, “How?!”
“You know, it was like a call to arms and small towns. It was a threatening kind of video for Black people, I mean, people were putting this on like, TikTok,” Crawford added.
Aldean replied saying, “But there was, 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, and anybody that saw that in the video, then you weren’t looking hard enough in the video is all I can tell you.”
The music video showed footage of protests, mainly the Black Lives Matter movement as Aldean performed in front of a courthouse where a lynching took place.
Aldean says he was “excited to cut it” as he believed it was “a song that actually said something for a change” and not “just another song for radio.” The singer said he knew mentioning guns in the song would get people talking but he didn’t “expect to get the heat it got. And I think that was because of the video more so than the actual song.”
In regard to filming the video in front of the courthouse where a Black teen was lynched, he said, “For anybody that thinks we picked that building specifically for that reason because there was a lynching there, whatever….” Aldean maintains that he didn’t know the history of the building and said, “I also don’t go back 100 years and check on the history of a place before we go shoot [a video]. It’s also the place where I go get my car tags every year. It’s my county that I live in.”
Aldean added that he wouldn’t film the video at that location knowing what he knows now but doubled down saying he wouldn’t check on the history of the building because “if you’re in the South, you can probably go to any small town courthouse — you can be hard pressed to find one that hasn’t had had some sort of racial issue over the years at some point. That’s just a fact.”
About the images that flashed throughout the video, Aldean says he was inspired by Billy Joel’s music video for “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”
“The whole idea behind the video was to show the lawlessness and the disrespect for cops and just trashing cities — I’m just not cool with that,” Aldean said.
Watch the full interview in the video posted below.
This would not be the first time Aldean defended his song that enjoyed success in the music charts following the controversy climbing up to the top spots on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs and the Billboard Hot 100.
While making an appearance on Coop’s Rockin’ Country Saturday Night podcast, Aldean continued to justify the lyrics that were deemed problematic.
“If you’ve got common sense, you can look at the video and see, I’m not sayin’ anything that’s not true,” he said. “In the video, I’m showin’ you what happened — I didn’t do it, I didn’t create it — it just happened, and I saw it, and I’m not cool with it.”
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