Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” controversy centered on more than the song: its July 2023 video placed him outside a courthouse with a history tied to racial violence and mixed that performance with protest and police footage. Aldean rejected a racist or pro-lynching interpretation; critics said the lyrics, imagery and setting evoked vigilantism and racial violence. Here is what happened, and what the record does—and does not—establish.
2015: A blackface Halloween costume is reported
A photograph showed Aldean, who is white, dressed as rapper Lil Wayne in blackface. PolitiFact reported that Aldean later told Billboard he had “zero malicious intent.” That statement describes his explanation; it does not settle how others viewed the image. PolitiFact’s account revisited the episode while examining the later video controversy.
October 2017: Aldean performs during the Route 91 shooting
Aldean was onstage at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, when a gunman opened fire on the crowd. TIME’s October 3 report gave the toll at that point as at least 59 dead and 527 injured; those are contemporaneous figures, not a final or current casualty count.
Aldean canceled three California shows scheduled for October 6–8. Explaining the decision, he said, “I feel like out of respect for the victims, their families and our fans, it is the right thing to do.” TIME reported that he described canceling as the right choice in the wake of the shooting. TIME’s October 2017 report covers his performance and the cancellations.
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May 2023: The song arrives before the video
“Try That in a Small Town” was released in May 2023. Aldean said he expected its reference to guns to prompt discussion. The song’s release matters to the timeline: the sharp escalation of attention came after its video appeared, not when the song first came out.
July 14, 2023: The video puts a charged setting at the center
The video showed Aldean performing outside the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, intercut with scenes of protests, violence and police encounters. The courthouse is associated with the 1927 lynching of Henry Choate and the 1946 Columbia race riot. That documented local history gave the backdrop a significance beyond its appearance as a civic building.
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The setting and imagery became central to the dispute. Critics said the combination evoked racial violence, vigilantism or gun violence. Aldean said the song was about community solidarity and rejected a racial reading: “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it.” He described the idea as an “unspoken rule” among people raised in small towns, saying, “We all have each other’s backs and we look out for each other.” Those are Aldean’s explanations of his intent; critics’ interpretations of the video and song were different. Georgia Public Broadcasting’s NPR report recounts the responses and the courthouse history.
July 2023: CMT stops airing the video
After the backlash, CMT confirmed that it would no longer air the video. The spokesperson who confirmed the decision to NPR/GPB did not provide a reason. It is therefore accurate to say CMT pulled the video from rotation, but not to claim that the network publicly explained why.
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July 2023: Fact-checkers examine the montage
Aldean said there was not a video clip that was not real news footage. PolitiFact and Lead Stories checked clips they could identify and found that the montage was not uniformly U.S. news footage: some identifiable scenes were stock or staged, while verified protest footage included events outside the United States and footage from earlier years. Their findings apply to the clips they were able to trace, not necessarily every image in the video.
PolitiFact’s fact-check and Lead Stories’ review detail the identified footage and its provenance.
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November 1, 2023: Aldean reflects on the courthouse
In a CBS interview, Aldean said he had not known about the courthouse’s lynching history when the video was filmed. He said he might choose another location if he could redo the video with that knowledge, while standing by the song and his intentions. He also said, “I don’t feel bad about that because I know my intentions behind, you know, shooting the video there and recording the song and everything.” His reflection distinguishes his stated purpose from the setting’s documented history and the meaning viewers assigned to it.
CBS reported that “Try That in a Small Town” appears on Aldean’s album Highway Desperado. CBS’s November 2023 interview covers his comments.
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What the timeline establishes—and what it cannot settle
- The song preceded the video; the July 14, 2023 video release brought the courthouse setting and montage into the center of public criticism.
- The courthouse has documented connections to the 1927 lynching of Henry Choate and the 1946 Columbia race riot.
- Aldean denied racist or pro-lynching intent and described the song as community solidarity. Critics interpreted the lyrics, imagery and location differently. Intent and audience interpretation are distinct questions; neither should be presented as a proven substitute for the other.
- CMT stopped airing the video, but the cited confirmation did not disclose the network’s reason.
- Fact-checkers identified stock or staged footage as well as authentic protest scenes from outside the United States and from earlier years. They did not establish the provenance of every clip.
- Aldean’s experience performing during the Route 91 shooting is part of the context for his public remarks about violence, but it does not by itself determine the meaning of a later song or video.
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