Jason Aldean at Budweiser Stage in Toronto on Sept. 7.TOM PANDI/Supplied
Midway through his concert at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage on Thursday, the mainstream country star Jason Aldean told the sold-out crowd that it was time to “address the elephant in the room.” He was referring to his controversial hit single, Try That in a Small Town.
His cowboy hat worn so low as to obscure his eyes, the drawling Georgia native said the song had caused a “lot of stuff,” but he declined to get into specifics. And so the elephant went largely unaddressed as Aldean sang a number that critics say glorifies gun violence and advocates vigilantism. The song’s provocative video, rife with racist overtones and pulled from Country Music Television, was not presented on the onstage screen.
“Cuss out a cop, spit in his face, stomp on the flag and light it up, yeah, ya think you’re tough,” Aldean crooned, chest puffed. “Well, try that in a small town, see how far ya make it down the road.” He continued with lyrics about “good ol’ boys, raised up right,” and a gun given to him by his grandfather.
Country music loves its guns. And no other genre shoots itself in the foot so regularly.
The mud flap music is on a hot streak, transcending the country charts to rule the Billboard Hot 100 with an unprecedented winning streak of four consecutive No. 1 hits, including Aldean’s Try That in a Small Town, Anthony Oliver’s working-class ode Rich Men North of Richmond, Morgan Wallen’s Last Night, and Zach Bryan’s I Remember Everything. Luke Combs’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, currently at No. 2, was one of the songs of the summer. According to Billboard magazine, consumption of the genre in the United States is up 20.3 per cent from a year ago.
The surge has been accompanied by pearl clutching and controversy. In the currently raging red-state/blue-state culture wars, country music flies its flag for the former side like no other genre.
Oliver’s politically confused Rich Men North of Richmond was cheered by conservatives for its racially charged line about obese welfare recipients (even though the song otherwise protests politicians and the rich). Combs, a rich, white male, was criticized – unjustly, to my mind – for appropriating a 1988 hit written by a Black queer singer-songwriter.
Wallen, a bonafide superstar, has avoided controversy since he was caught on video in 2021 hurling a racial epithet. Bryan, a U.S. Navy veteran from Oklahoma who has struck a chord with his overearnest Americana music, was arrested by troopers Thursday night in his home state and booked on a charge of obstructing an investigation.
The 19th-century circus owner Phineas T. Barnum is credited for the truism “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” but country music does not need the clown show. Aldean’s Try That in a Small Town was greeted at Budweiser Stage with much less enthusiasm than his other hits. Instead of singing along and cheering, the crowd whipped out phone cameras to record the performance of a number that is contentious but not all that catchy.
In short, the gun song was a dud.
Country music loves its guns. And no other genre shoots itself in the foot so regularly.TOM PANDI/Supplied
At its best, mainstream county music is party music, not politics. At Aldean’s show in Toronto, fists were pumped, beer was chugged and hell was raised. Country is the rock ‘n’ roll of these times, and Aldean is particularly beholden to that once-dominant genre.
Relentlessly accessible, lyrically lazy, roaring with guitars and outfitted with big, swooping choruses, his music is more Nickelback than it is Hank Williams. Though Aldean’s band includes a pedal-steel guitarist, the contributions of that player were buried low in the mix. The classic country instrument is now vestigial, more ancestral than functional.
Aldean’s embrace of rock music’s sounds and traits is unabashed. On We Back, he sang about his father getting “blasted in the bleachers” listening to AC/DC’s Back in Black. That song was released in 1980, three years after Aldean was born.
But where rock music is steeped in rebellion, mainstream country is proudly regressive and pathologically nostalgic in its advocation of “traditional values” and the way things used to be. On Dirt Road Anthem: ”Memory lane up in the headlights, it’s got me reminiscing on the good times.”
Aldean and his bro-country brethren fight for a heritage and lifestyle they feel is being threatened. This is rural against urban. “We buy beer at Amoco and crank our Kraco speakers with that country radio,” Aldean sang (on a song titled Hicktown, not to put too fine a point on it). “Got your country boys and your red neck girls – It’s the party heard ‘round the world.”
Aldean is not wrong. He is trying small town out in the big towns, and he is succeeding.