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The country singer said the tune is an ode to the “feeling of a community” he had growing up. Critics say it is offensive
music video for the song “Try That in a Small Town,” by the country music superstar Jason Aldean, which was filmed at the site of a lynching, amid accusations that its lyrics and message are offensive.
The video, released on Friday, was shot in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., a site known for the 1927 mob lynching of Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man, and is interspersed with violent news footage, including protests. An American flag is draped between the building’s central pillars, while Aldean, strumming a guitar, lists what he imagines as big city behavior that would not be well received in a small town; “carjack an old lady”; “cuss out a cop”; “stomp on the flag.”
State Representative Justin Jones of Tennessee, a Democrat, condemned the song on Twitter, describing it as a “heinous song calling for racist violence” that promoted “a shameful vision of gun extremism and vigilantism.”