Joe Rogan has weighed in on the conversation surrounding Jason Aldean’s latest single ‘Try That In A Small Town’, and not everyone agrees with what he has to say.
It comes after the track debuted at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart after it found itself in the midst of controversy. Following the release of its music video, the song has faced condemnation from NAACP officials, fellow country musicians and social media users.
The track originally dropped in May, when it was met with little attention, but the music video’s setting and content have resulted in Country Music Television, a country music cable network in the States, pulling the video from the channel.
The video remains on YouTube, where it has amassed twenty million views at the time of writing.
The video shows Aldean performing in front of Maury County courthouse, located in Columbia, Tennessee, and is the site of a lynching of Henry Choate, a Black man, in 1927, per The Guardian. This shot is mixed with footage depicting protests as being violent.
The lyrics of the song came under fire following the attention drawn to it after the release of the music video.
Lyrics facing criticism include: “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and light it up / Yeah, you think you’re tough / Well, try that in a small town / See how far you make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own.”
As well as: “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / Well, that s*** might fly in the city, good luck.”
However, Aldean shared a post to Twitter dismissing the backlash.
“In the past 24 hour I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests,” he began.
“These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it – and there isn’t a single clip that isn’t real news footage – and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music – this one goes too far.”
“As so many pointed out,” he continued, “I was present at Route 91 – where so many lost their lives – and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy. NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.”
He went on to explain his interpretation of the track.
“Try That In A Small Town, for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbours, regardless of differences of background or belief. Because they were our neighbours, and that was above any differences.
“My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least one day without a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to – that’s what this song is about.”
Despite Aldean’s pushback against the controversy, the backlash did not stop, with country legend Sheryl Crow adding her voice to the debate.
“I’m from a small town. Even people in small towns are sick of violence,” she wrote on Twitter. “There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence. You should know that better than anyone having survived a mass shooting. This is not American or small town-like. It’s just lame.”
Crow refers to the Route-91 shooting that Aldean also mentioned in his statement. In 2017, Aldean was performing at the festival in Las Vegas when the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history occurred, leaving sixty people dead and 867 injured.
However, the most recent voice to join in the debate is Joe Rogan, host of The Joe Rogan Experience.
During an episode of the podcast, he said that he thinks there are “hundreds of rap songs out that are infinitely worse” and that the criticism faced by Aldean surprised him.
“The level of outrage, now I’m not saying that that’s the greatest song in the world’s ever known, you know, but the level of outrage coming from people that are upset about that song is so strange when there are hundreds of rap songs out there that are infinitely worse and also enjoyable,” he said, via Bro Bible.
“And we’re not even talking about old stuff. There’s new stuff too. There’s hip hop, there’s wild rock songs. There’s a lot of wild sh– And to be focusing on that one, and it’s the racial aspect of it,” Rogan continued.
“It was crazy because like the real ANTIFA problems that were happening during the BLM, I think it was a lot of white people doing that, right? Wasn’t it? It was a lot of like, lost liberal whites who were very angry, who decided to take up this movement and smash things,” Rogan said. “So like, the racial aspect of it, there’s nothing racial about the lyrics.”
