The music video for the country singer Jason Aldean’s controversial single Try That in a Small Town, which became a political lightning rod for its threats toward police protesters, has been quietly edited to remove images of Black Lives Matters demonstrations.
The popular video – which had over 19m views at the time of writing, up from 350,000 when Country Music Television removed it from its channel last week – is now six seconds shorter than when it was originally posted on YouTube on 14 July, as first reported by the Washington Post. The video still features footage of protesters squaring off against armed police, but no longer contains footage from Fox 5 Atlanta depicting violent confrontations during the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.
Portions of that news clip appeared twice in the original video, and at one point were projected onto the wall of a Tennessee courthouse where a Black teen was lynched in 1927. Aldean and his band performed in front of the courthouse, singing about crimes demanding small-town retribution: “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.”
It is unclear when the video was edited, the Post reported, though it appears several changes have been made since the video drew widespread criticism, including from the singers Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell, for its intimation of violence against Black Lives Matter and anti-police protesters. Aldean has denied the video and song were about race, writing on Twitter that the song “refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief”. At a concert last weekend, he dismissed the criticism as differences of opinion and partially blamed “cancel culture”.
The song, which was not written by Aldean, made few waves when it debuted in May, but the video has been explosive. Country Music Television removed it from its channel after backlash from the NAACP and other social media critics who pointed out that the intimations to violence against Black Lives Matter protesters alluded to 20th-century “sundown towns” – all-white towns known for attacks on Black people who stayed overnight. The video still contains clips of crime, violence and clashes with police from recent protests.
The video has since drawn support from such rightwing figures as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, and exploded in popularity. Billboard reported that it was the bestselling country song to debut on Billboard’s charts in more than a decade. In the week after the video’s release, the country-rock song was played to a radio airplay audience of 7.3 million, sold 228,000 units and was streamed over 11m times – a 999% increase.
At a concert in Cincinnati over the weekend, Aldean blamed “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”. He added that “one thing I saw this week was a bunch of country music fans that could see through a lot of the bullshit, all right? I saw country music fans rally like I’ve never seen before and it was pretty badass to watch, I gotta say.”
The Post reported a few other changes to the video, such as the removal of two clips in the final 30 seconds: one of a man with sunglasses staring into a rural sunset, and another of an old man in a wheelchair discussing small-town values.
