Jason Aldean is stirring up controversy behind his single “Try That in a Small Town”‘s rise to the top of the charts: The song topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, the publication announced Monday. “Try That in a Small Town” was originally released in April to little fanfare until Aldean dropped the music video for the song in early July 2023. Within days, CMT pulled the video. amid criticism that the video promotes white nationalism and paints racial protests as lawless and violent. Portions of the video were filmed at the courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where a 1927 lynching occurred. The video was re-uploaded to YouTube last week, and some footage of a Black Lives Matters protest in Atlanta was re-edit. erase.
Aldean faced backlash from some artists, including Sheryl Crow, who said the track “doesn’t sound like America or like a small town. It’s just lame.” Aldean has dismissed the criticism, denying that the track is a “support” song. He addressed the controversy during a concert in Cincinnati, appearing to thank fans for their support of the song.
“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.”
During a concert in Boston this past weekend, he tried to relate the controversy around the song to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. “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 shit out of [them],” Aldean said.
Controversy aside, the Billboard chart marks an important milestone for country music: For the first time in Hot 100 history, the top three spots all belong to country songs, Billboard reported. news, with Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” at No. 2 and Luke Combs’ cover of “Fast Car” at No. 3. The genre had an overall boom in 2023 thanks to big records such as Wallen’s One Thing at a Time and Taylor Swift’s Say It Now (Taylor’s Version).
