Anti-Woke Culture War Hits The Music Business... And Not Just Opportunistic MAGA Nut Jason Aldean

Trump & DeSantis Come Out Backing Racism

The MAGAty Aldeans + Trumpanzee

Yesterday we were contrasting Neil Young’s “Southern Man” (1970) with Lynyrd Skynryd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974) and Hank Williams Jr’s “If The South Woulda Won” (1988). Today we have Bronski Beat and Jason Aldean, both with songs about small towns. I was a fan of Bronski Beat when they released their classic, hooky song about growing up gay in a small town. I got to know who Jason Aldean is last year when his crackpot wife came out as an extreme MAGAt… and he did as well.

Wednesday evening, L.A. Times music critic Mikael Wood alerted his readers that Aldean’s controversial “Try That in a Small Town” “is shameful” [and] naturally, it’s the right’s song of the summer.” The video has been banned by CMT— which is just fine with Aldean… especially since señor Trumpanzee embraced it Wednesday night:

Wood wrote that the turgid song “lays out a vision of urban chaos— an old lady getting carjacked, a holdup at a liquor store, a cop being spat on— before more or less threatening to kill anyone who might attempt to bring such behavior to a place ‘full of good old boys raised up right.’”

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

Got a gun that my granddad gave me

They say one day they're gonna round up

Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck

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

Full of good ol' boys, raised up right

If you're looking for a fight

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

Wood wrote that the incendiary and deceitful new video shows his band performing “in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, as violent news footage— including scenes from what appear to be Black Lives Matter protests— is projected onto the building. After premiering Friday, the video drew immediate criticism on social media for its embrace of vigilantism and for its conspicuous use of a location known to historians as the site of a lynching of an 18-year-old Black man in 1927. ‘As Tennessee lawmakers, we have an obligation to condemn Jason Aldean’s heinous song calling for racist violence,’ state Rep. Justin Jones, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter. Among the other prominent voices denouncing ‘Try That in a Small Town’ was Sheryl Crow, who tweeted that ‘there’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence.’”

CMT hasn’t explained its decision to stop airing the video, though it’s easy to assume that the network was seeking to distance itself from the widening backlash against Aldean (at a moment when its corporate owner, Paramount, is already facing scorn amid the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strike).

But whatever exposure he’s losing on CMT— an asset of debatable value in the YouTube era— Aldean, 46, is more than making up for with the hubbub over its being yanked: Nearly two decades into a Nashville career that’s seen him top Billboard’s Country Airplay chart a whopping 25 times, Aldean has happily taken up the role of bomb-throwing right-wing culture warrior, one for whom each attempted cancellation by the so-called elites of music and media only boosts his appeal among those who’ve stuck with him.

He’s already whining that he’s “the victim of a hysterical woke-ocracy— a familiar notion amplified predictably Tuesday night by the Fox News host Jesse Watters, who said on his show that Aldean’s single ‘carries a simple message: Small-town America doesn’t put up with what they put up with in the city. But the media won’t allow the truth to come out about what happened in the summer of love,’ Watters continued, referring sarcastically to the racial justice movement that swept the country in 2020.”

On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chimed in on Twitter, saying, “When the media attacks you, you’re doing something right,” and adding that Aldean “has nothing to apologize for.” Fellow Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy joined in too with a tweet saying that Aldean “writes a song defending the values that ALL Americans used to share— faith, family, hard work, patriotism— only to be immediately sacrificed at the altar of censorship & cancellation.”

Yet “Try That in a Small Town” is just the latest volley from Aldean, who despite his insistence that his “political views have never been something I’ve hidden from” has in fact become far more vocal in the years since Donald Trump’s election. In 2021 he and his wife, Brittany Aldean, a conservative influencer, dressed their young children in T-shirts that read “Hidin’ from Biden”; last year the couple feuded with Maren Morris over young people seeking gender-affirming healthcare.

For ages, country stars avoided politics, aiming for a squishy ideological middle ground with no risk of offending anyone who might buy a record or a concert ticket. As Emily Nussbaum details in a New Yorker story published this week, though, acts in Nashville are increasingly sorting themselves into opposing camps: one more liberal (in both a political and musical sense), the other more conservative (ditto).

As in America more broadly, this polarization seems due in some part to social media, which has empowered artists to speak more directly to their fans without fear of being misrepresented. But there’s also a business component: If you’re unlikely to connect with a mass mainstream audience— as with Kid Rock, who recently shot up a case of Bud Light to protest the beer’s association with the trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, or Aaron Lewis, the Staind frontman who’s gone on to a solo country career and who railed against woke-ism in 2021’s “Am I the Only One”— it makes sense to super-serve your base.

Is it accurate to say that Aldean, one of the most reliable hit makers of the 2010s, no longer sits at the center of country music? Nashville insiders I’ve spoken to disagree on the matter. One high-level exec told me Aldean is irrelevant today— “a sideshow all the way”; others in town point out that radio stations still add his new singles (including “Try That in a Small Town,” which Spotify put on its popular New Boots playlist) and that he was just nominated for entertainer of the year at May’s Academy of Country Music Awards.

By Wednesday afternoon, “Try That in a Small Town” had ascended to the No. 1 spot on iTunes’ songs chart— hardly the perch it was in the pre-streaming days but an indication of a strongly devoted core still willing to pay $1.29 to download three minutes of music.

Still, there’s no disputing that Aldean— not unlike other male stars his age such as Eric Church and Luke Bryan— has been pushed aside to some extent by the younger likes of Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen, the latter of whom enacted a kind of torch-passing moment when he made a surprise appearance at an Aldean concert last year at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

“He’s in a medium state where he’s had bigger moments,” said Shane McAnally, the veteran songwriter and producer who’s helped create dozens of hits for Kacey Musgraves, Sam Hunt, Keith Urban and Old Dominion, among many others. “Everybody plateaus or declines. But in my mind, he’s like, ‘If I can’t be the best, I’m just gonna be the worst.’”

Which isn’t to suggest that Aldean’s hard-right turn is an act. He’s given no reason to believe he’s not sincere in his political opinions. But there’s a point-of-no-return quality to “Try That in a Small Town,” as though Aldean had concluded that the only path available to him was going all-in on the MAGA rhetoric.

Many critics online were particularly galled by the song’s pro-gun spirit— “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck— given that Aldean was onstage during the 2017 mass shooting at a country festival in Las Vegas that killed 58 people. McAnally said he was “gobsmacked” by Aldean’s decision to release the song just months after a shooting at a Nashville elementary school in which three children and three adults were killed.

“It just feels so intentional,” McAnally said. “And so on the wrong side of history.”

And didn’t we listen to Dolly singing “World On Fire” yesterday? Here she is again, this time with Miley Cyrus singing “Rainbowland” (which exalts the virtues of inclusivity) and being banned— where else— Wisconsin’s far right Waukesha County. Worse yet, a teacher was fired over it. A week ago, The Guardian reported that Melissa Tempel was fired after she criticized her public school district’s decision to ban the “Rainbowland” last March.

The members of the board governing public schools in the solidly Republican community of Waukesha voted unanimously to dismiss Melissa Tempel from her job on Wednesday, saying the teacher’s defense of the Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton duet violated district policy because she did not speak to her supervisors first.

Tempel and her advocates, meanwhile, have maintained that she was exercising her constitutionally protected right to free speech but was punished because the song in question references rainbows, a key symbol of the LGBTQ+ community, according to reports from local television station WISN as well as other media outlets.