Jason Aldean decries cancel culture while snagging best-performing single of his career

Old cancel culture is at it again, trying to introduce consequences that end up looking a lot like rewards. Country singer Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town” may have been pulled from CMT’s music video lineup, but he’s so far emerged from the song’s controversy relatively unscathed. In fact, he seems to have emerged from the controversy better off than he was before. But that didn’t stop him from complaining.

“It’s been a long week, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff. I’ve seen a lot of stuff suggesting I’m this, suggesting I’m that. Here’s the thing, here’s one thing I feel: I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion,” Aldean said during a concert at Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Friday (per Entertainment Weekly). “You can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true, right?”

Right: like how Aldean supposedly thinks “Try That In A Small Town” is just a celebration of classic Americana, while others have accurately criticized the message as threatening violence against people with different political beliefs. Who’s to say what the “true” interpretation of “Got a gun that my granddad gave me/They say one day they’re gonna round up/Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck” is?

“What I am is a proud American,” Aldean declared at his concert. “I’m proud to be from here. I love our country, I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bullshit started happening to us. I love our country, I love my family, and I will do anything to protect that. I can tell you that right now.” He then decried “cancel culture” as “something that, if people don’t like what you say, they try to make sure they can cancel you, which means try to ruin your life, ruin everything.”

As it turns out, nothing was really ruined for Jason Aldean, and in fact, “Try That In A Small Town” reached the number two spot on the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard announced on Monday. It’s a new peak for Aldean, whose previous highest-charting single “Dirt Road Anthem” only reached #7. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the song’s streams increased by 999 percent, from 987,000 to 11.7 million, in the wake of the controversy.

As it turns out, it pays to be divisive. Who’d’ve thunk? Some of those streams might’ve come from people who were purely curious to see what all the fuss is about, but many probably came from the exact audience that Aldean was courting. That’s a defiant, right-wing audience best represented by some of Aldean’s defenders like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. On the other hand, many have denounced the track for undertones of racism and being reminiscent of a pro-lynching attitude. His detractors include Sheryl Crow, Jason Isbell, Margo Price, and View hosts Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar.