By Terry Manning
I was browsing Apple Music when it occurred to me to check out a couple of the more popular recent tunes.
I cued up Jason Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town.” The song began:
“Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like.”
So far so good. Sucker punches? Bad. Carjacking? Bad. Pulling a gun on a liquor store owner? I couldn’t conceive of a reason to do that, but okay: bad. Three-for-three.
“Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you’re tough”
My brain short-circuited: The guy is singing about Jan. 6?!? Holy smokes! No wonder this song is controversial!
“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.”
Yeah, try to overthrow the federal government in a small town, dude! See how far that gets y — Wait, that doesn’t make sense.
“Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they’re gonna round up”
That’s when it hit me. This is another one of those made-up patriot songs.
How long have people been threatening some unnamed “they” are going to take people’s guns away? And who is “they?” Must be gun manufacturers, because no one else is profiting from talking about random gun seizures. Except maybe politicians who try to rally constituents by threatening “they” are coming for their guns.
But “they” haven’t, have they? Hmm.
I watched the video for Aldean’s song on YouTube; it was removed from Country Music Television after criticism. There was nothing in it about Jan. 6. In fact, the video featured clips of big-city protests, most of which looked like Black Lives Matter protests. Most BLM demonstrations were peaceful, but sure, placate the “Burn Loot Murder” crowd.
Still, Aldean wasn’t born in a “small town.” His hometown of Macon, Ga., is a city of 153,000 people. That isn’t New York City, but it ain’t exactly Mayberry, either.
I researched and found the video was filmed in front of a Tennessee courthouse where a Black man was lynched in 1927, followed in 1948 by a race riot that nearly claimed the life of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
These events happened in Columbia, Tenn., a town with a population of about 42,000 according to the 2020 Census. In South Carolina, Greer and Florence are comparable in size.
Those actually are small towns, and they are hardly safe havens from social unrest. Ask folks in Orangeburg. Selma, Ala. Wilmington, N.C. You can’t ask anyone who lives in Rosewood, Fla., about the sometimes-dangers of small-town life. It was burned to the ground.
Aldean’s music labelmate Blanco Brown came to his defense, pointing to the time Aldean reached out to him after a motorcycle accident (nothing repels accusations of racism like having a Black friend), but he still criticized the “Small Town” lyrics as “just bad songwriting.”
Brown lamented on Twitter he hates the song but, “Aldeans Stream Are Gonna Go Through The Roof.” Which they have: the song hit No. 1 on the iTunes country chart.
Aldean addressed the uproar at a Cincinnati concert, blaming “cancel culture” and telling the crowd, “I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to — doesn’t mean it’s true, right?”
Right. Like my thinking, Jason Aldean made something designed to appeal to people with shallow minds and deep-seated racism in their hearts.
Blanco Brown isn’t the only one who knows, you’ll never go broke doing that in this country.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate and worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.
