Reminder: Country Singer Jason Aldean Wanted To ‘Try That’ With Your Second Amendment Rights
CMT pulled County star Jason Aldean‘s newest music video, infuriating conservative activists and Country music fans.
The video carries lyrics from Aldean’s newest single about one’s chances of survival should they intend on rioting, carjacking, or maligning the police while guests in one of America’s numerous rural communities.
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
Conservative Twitter warriors and reactionary right blogs have come to the immediate rescue of the Bro Country superstar and claiming them as one of their own, promoting the song to No. 1 by a significant measure of music popularity.
But is this really a case of NashVegas giving the axe to conservative values yet again? Let’s take a closer look before you add this one to your iTunes playlist.
The song appears to have premiered to the general public less than a week ago. CMT (formerly Country Music Television, which has in recent years, and unlike parent company MTV, gone back to playing actual music videos as it struggles to retain its place on cable/satellite channel lineups) has hosted Aldean numerous times at various awards shows. He’s one of their darlings. Surely the higher-ups were given an embargoed listen to the song and a look at the video well in advance of its Friday release. Yet CMT did not make the announcement they were canceling the video until Tuesday, and foregoing the usual woke sophistry that goes along with a forced cancelation.
About the song itself: The lyrics, with four names to the songwriting credit, are agreeable enough to the tough-talkers who typically listen to Country music. It hearkens back to the “Country Boy Can Survive” Outlaw vibe of Hank Williams Jr., praising the virtues of rural community living over urban epicenters. And this despite the fact that numerous small towns across America are becoming the new preferred breeding ground for what were once “urban problems” such as epidemic drug overdoses, violent crime, and generational poverty, while abject poverty seems to be narrowly avoided thanks to a low cost of living. (Take some time and click the preceding links if you want some eye-opening reading about the true state of rural America). We wish it was as simple as “spitting some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eye” or running away to Luckenbach.
But Aldean wouldn’t know any of that. Not only is he from a big city (does Macon count?) but he and his wife live in a “funky new” Nashville mansion where they count all their money. Hardly “small town” — not that lyrics always must match the performer’s personal life.
Then there his personal stances. Remember when someone did “try that” during an outdoor Las Vegas Aldean music set, October 2017 just outside the Mandalay Bay hotel? According to Billboard:
Aldean was onstage when the gunman started shooting with high-powered weapons at the fans from a hotel room window across the street from the outdoor Route 91 Harvest Festival. That night in October, 59 people were killed and hundreds more injured in what has become the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in modern history. […] About 40 members of his band and crew, as well as his pregnant wife, Brittany, were all there at the festival […] two of their tour buses were shot, as well as their lighting board and stage. Aldean’s bass player found a bullet fragment in his bass guitar.
Aldean’s immediate response was as heroic and compassionate as anyone else who came within a crosshair from being mortally shot. The experience was nothing but traumatic for all involved. But it’s his political response a year later that is opposite of his new No. 1 hit:
“It’s a no-win situation … I think no matter what you say, whether you’re for gun control or not, I mean, you’re setting yourself up to be crucified in the public eye or in the media. … It’s too easy to get guns, first and foremost. When you can walk in somewhere and you can get one in 5 minutes, do a background check that takes 5 minutes, like how in-depth is that background check? Those are the issues I have. It’s not necessarily the guns themselves or that I don’t think people should have guns. I have a lot of them. […] Nobody is looking at what the actual issue is and really how to come to an agreement and make a smart decision.”
Aldean, as “Duck Dynasty” fans may already know, is a part-owner of Buck Commander hunting supplies which, yes, sells shooting gear.
That’s not to say there aren’t Country music fans who support some form of background checks. Polling is all over the place on the issue, especially in the aftermath of a horrific mass shooting. But let’s look at those lyrics again:
Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they’re gonna round up
Well, that [explitive] might fly in the city,
good luck
Sorry, Jason, “granddad” couldn’t transfer his gun to you without filing paperwork under the most prominent and aggressive background check schemes. What else will regulators do but “round up” your guns if you’re found to have one illegally? And if there ever comes a stronger, federal background check regime, you better believe rural, suburban, and urban gun owners alike will have their Second Amendment rights infringed — it won’t stop at no city limits sign.
At least one conservative radio show host picked up on Aldean’s support of gun control:
Knowing all this, Aldean’s sincerity rings as hollow as the syncopated clap tracks common to the Hick-Hop movement he represents. Unfortunately for conservatives who rarely visit the small towns Aldean tries to sing about, they’re blind to the whole social and political context, let alone the stances of Country music stars and their handlers. They just see a well-mannered, successful guy representing heartland values in a cowboy hat sticking it to Big Media.
In all fairness, that’s what we want to see, too. Reality, sadly, paints a strikingly different picture of deteriorating small towns and the current state of Music Row located in the heart of one of the world’s fastest-growing metro areas. Both kinds of communities are in desperate need of an American Revival.
On the bright side: If all this is a marketing ploy (maybe/maybe not) then it says something about how large and influential middle America still is. Such conservative-minded consumers revolutionized the box office earlier this month with “Sound of Freedom,” and now have turned a song on the chopping block into a No. 1 hit. That bodes well for America’s future, gimmick or no gimmick.
Updates: 10:01 a.m. 7/20/23
