Sorry, Jason Aldeanbut she looks like sheryl crow understand how to read context.
The “All I Wanna Do” Grammy winner spoke out against the country singer’s controversy new track, “Try That In A Small Town”: a menacing little ditty that promises protesters and outsiders that they won’t get “far in the way” if they don’t adhere to their politically charged ideals of small-town living.
“@Jason_Aldean I’m from a small town. Even small town people are fed up with violence,” Crow tweeted at the musician on Tuesday. “There is nothing small town or American about promoting violence.”
“Try That In A Small Town” came out in May, but gained more attention when its accompanying music video was released on Friday. The video includes shots of Aldean performing on the steps of a Tennessee courthouse that was there the site of a historic lynching, interspersed with news footage of violent protests.
The video was pulled from CMT on Monday due to its disturbing imagery, Variety confirmed. (It can still be found on YouTube.)
The video is accompanied by lyrics warning protesters that if they “cross that line” and “slash a cop, spit in his face” or “pipe the flag and light it on fire,” it “won’t take long” for the “good guys” in a small town to retaliate. Aldean also makes it clear in a line in his song that he “got a gun that my grandpa gave me.”
Aldean downplayed the confrontational tone of “Try That In This Small Town.” Social media Tuesday. He denied that he had released “a pro-lynching song” despite where the video was shot, and insisted that “there are no lyrics in the song that refer to or point to race.” He also appeared to reject accusations that his video implied he was “not too pleased with the BLM protests nationally.”
“These references are not only without merit, but also dangerous,” Aldean wrote. “There’s not a single lyric in the song that references or points to race, and there’s not a video clip that isn’t actual news footage, and while I can try to respect others for having their own take on a song with music, this one goes too far.”
Aldean also dismissed concerns that the song promotes violence by noting that it was in the Route 91 Harvest music festival mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.
“As many have pointed out, I was present on Route 91, where many lost their lives, and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy,” he explained. “No one, including me, wants to keep seeing senseless headlines or families torn apart.”
But his reasoning didn’t fly with Crow, who implied that the country crooner is the last person who should be advocating any kind of violence, given his lived experience.
“You should know better than anyone who has survived a mass shooting,” Crow said in his tweet to Aldean on Tuesday. “That’s not American or small-town-like. It’s just lame.”
