Jason Aldean dedicated his controversial hit, “Try That in a Small Town,” to his “friend” Donald Trump after the assassination attempt on the former president’s life at his recent Pennsylvania rally.
The 47-year-old country singer and vocal Trump supporter was performing in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday (July 13) hours after Trump was injured by one of the eight rounds fired by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
“President Trump’s a friend of mine so I want to send this next song out to him,” Aldean told the crowd.
Referencing the upcoming 2024 presidential election, he added: “We all know what’s going to happen come November, so it’s all good.
“Just goes to show you there’s a lot of bulls*** in the world, and that’s kind of what this song right here was about, so this one goes out to the Pres,” Aldean said before launching into the 2023 song.
Released in May last year, the song ignited a furor among listeners after Aldean dropped the accompanying music video, which featured images of protestors fighting with police officers.
The song has been called “racist” and a “lynching anthem” after critics learned that the music video was filmed outside the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where 18-year-old Black teenager Henry Choate was lynched in 1927.
Jason Aldean sent out a song to his ‘friend’, former President Donald Trump (Getty Images)
In a later interview, Aldean defended the hit – which was quickly pulled from rotation on Country Music Television – saying that he was “not saying anything that’s not true” in the song.
“Country music is blue-collar music, man, it’s for the everyman. I’ve got eyes, I can see what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t care which side of the political fence you want to stand on.”
Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music
Sign up now for a 30-day free trial
The musician said critics had made “the song and the video into something that it’s not,” adding: “If you’ve got common sense, you can look at the video and see, I’m not sayin’ anything that’s not true.”
Aldean isn’t the only country artist to address Trump’s assassination attempt on stage.
Fellow country singer Cody Johnson paused his Chicago concert on Saturday to address the “disgusting” incident.
“The fact that any American citizen would think that what they did today would solve a problem in this country is absolutely disgusting. You want to solve a problem in this country, on Election Day go in there and vote for who you want,” Johnson told the audience.
“Because before most of you were born, an American soldier died for you to have the right to disagree with somebody else,” he said.
“I’m tired of the hatred. I’m tired of the division. I’m tired of people talking about Trump and Biden,” Johnson continued. “There are people in this crowd that agree with Trump. There are people in this crowd that agree with Biden… That is your God-given American right to believe what you want.”
Trump has since spoken out about the shooting in his first interview after the fact, saying that he’s “supposed to be dead.”
