Jason Aldean released "Try That in a Small Town" in May 2023. The song had been available for several months before its music video, directed by Shaun Silva and filmed at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, drew significant attention in July 2023. The courthouse had been the site of a 1927 lynching.
CMT pulled the video from its rotation, citing a review of the content. The song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming one of the year's commercially dominant country singles.
The controversy that followed was genuinely complicated in ways that some commentary simplified: the song's lyrics, which address threatening to respond violently to crime and political protest, were interpreted by critics as coded racial hostility and by supporters as an expression of rural American frustration with urban violence and political radicalism.
What the Song's Lyrics Actually Said
The lyrics describe behavior (carjacking, violent protest, aggressive confrontation) and threaten a response from the speaker, who identifies with a small-town community that will not tolerate such behavior. The lyric does not specify the race of the people engaging in the described behavior. It does not explicitly reference recent events.
The production and the video placed those lyrics in a specific visual context. The courthouse location's historical association with racial violence, whether or not intentional on the director's part, gave the imagery a layer of meaning that many observers found impossible to separate from the lyric content.
The CMT Decision and Its Implications
CMT's decision to pull the video was notable for being unusual: the network rarely removes content after it has been approved and released. The decision reflected both the specific concerns about the video imagery and the network's assessment of the reputational risk of continued broadcast.
The commercial result, that the controversy drove the song to number one, is a familiar pattern: controversy generates media attention, media attention generates streaming and download activity, streaming and download activity improves chart position. The song's performance confirmed that the audience for its cultural argument was large and commercially engaged.
For independent artists navigating the country format, the Aldean controversy in 2023 was a case study in how country music's political identity and its commercial infrastructure interact. Songs that explicitly or implicitly position themselves within a specific political cultural argument attract that argument's adherents as an audience.
Country Music and Its Political Tensions
Country music has navigated explicit political content throughout its history, from Hank Williams's social commentary to the Dixie Chicks' anti-Iraq War statement in 2003 to Oliver Anthony's chart debut in 2023. The genre's identity conversation in 2023 was more intense than at any point in recent memory because of the convergence of Beyonce's country project, Oliver Anthony's simultaneous phenomenon, Aldean's controversy, and the industry's reckoning with diversity and representation.
Whether country music's political identity is intrinsic to the genre or is a commercial construction that can be modified by market forces is a question that no single season's events can resolve. What 2023 demonstrated was that the identity conversation was commercially central, not peripheral.
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What This Means for the Independent Country Artist in 2022
The specific cultural and commercial landscape of country music in 2022 created both pressure and opportunity for independent artists operating outside Nashville's mainstream. The pressure was the familiar one: an industry dominated by a small number of major label artists who occupied most of the commercial infrastructure. The opportunity was equally real: streaming had created discovery pathways that did not exist ten years earlier, and audiences were actively looking for voices that the mainstream was not providing.
Independent country artists who understood their specific position in that landscape, including what they offered that the mainstream did not and who the audience was that was specifically looking for that, had genuine commercial opportunities available. The artists who struggled were those who were trying to compete with the mainstream on its own terms rather than serving the audience that the mainstream was not serving.
Operations like Mollohan Production Inc. work with artists specifically on this positioning question: not how to become the next Morgan Wallen, but how to find and serve the audience that is actively looking for what this specific artist has to offer.
FAQ
What is "Try That in a Small Town"? "Try That in a Small Town" is a 2023 single by Jason Aldean that sparked national controversy for its lyrics and music video, which was filmed at a Tennessee courthouse with a documented history of racial violence. CMT pulled the video; the song debuted at number one on the Hot 100.
Why did CMT pull the "Try That in a Small Town" music video? CMT pulled the video citing a review of its content. The primary concern expressed by critics was the use of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, which was the site of a 1927 lynching, as a backdrop for a song with imagery some interpreted as racially coded.
What happened to the song commercially after the controversy? "Try That in a Small Town" debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 following the controversy, indicating that the media attention generated by the CMT removal and public debate drove significant streaming and download activity.
Is country music inherently political? Country music has a long history of politically and socially engaged content across the political spectrum. The genre's political identity is contested and has been a recurring subject of commercial and cultural debate, most recently in 2023 with the convergence of multiple high-profile artist controversies.
Who is Jason Aldean? Jason Aldean is an American country artist from Macon, Georgia who has been one of the genre's most commercially successful acts since the mid-2000s. He is known for his mainstream country and country rock production approach.
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