When Jason Aldean launched “Attempt That in A Small City” in Might, the response was, properly, small-scale.
The tune debuted at No. 35 on Billboard’s Sizzling nation songs chart and fizzled out of the High 50. Then he dropped the controversial music video, eight weeks after the tune’s launch, and the nation star is having a historic run — for a couple of cause — on the music charts.
Streams for the one jumped 999 % after the music video’s launch and the tune offered 228,000 copies. It was sufficient to assist the observe land at No. 2 on the all-genre Billboard Sizzling 100, giving Aldean the largest pop hit of his profession and solely following behind the closely promoted launch of BTS star Jungkook’s single “Seven.” However every week later, “Attempt That In a Small City” continued to dominate by streams and gross sales, reaching the No. 1 spot on the Sizzling 100. On the nation charts, the tune is Aldean’s first No. 1 hit in almost a decade.
However the second isn’t notably celebratory, as a result of the response to “Attempt That In a Small City” has been cut up and prompted division. Some have criticized it for selling gun violence and taking intention on the Black Lives Matter motion. Producers edited the music video to take away information footage of BLM protests as a consequence of third social gathering copyright clearance points. However CMT — which usually performs nation music movies — shortly pulled the clip from its rotation days after its launch. Regardless of all that, the numbers and assist are robust, and Aldean’s tune has resonated with an viewers.
“I felt that Jason Aldean was expressing the sentiments that lots of people within the nation viewers felt, notably within the Trump America nation viewers,” says Don Cusic, a rustic music historian, writer and professor of music enterprise at Belmont College. “The video was simply in your face — it was in your face anger, and that simply bolstered that anger that’s in a lot of America immediately, that huge division.”
Cusic provides that the driving assist behind Aldean’s tune doesn’t shock him “as a result of there’s a darkish facet to this nation.”
Award-winning music journalist, writer and disaster communications guide Holly Gleason added that “there are a variety of annoyed individuals, a lot of whom take heed to nation radio, and once they hear any person is being shut down for his or her beliefs, they may are available in mass.”
“This tune was struggling at radio [and] as soon as he supercharged his imaginative and prescient for the tune with one thing that felt aligned to his politics and any person shut it down, all people who shares his politics confirmed up,” Gleason continued. “I’m unsure that each one the those who took him to No. 1 are essentially nation music followers and even Jason Aldean followers. I believe the numbers that he’s doing are individuals who really feel a really robust alliance to both political ideas or being locked out of a system that they consider they need to be part of, and so they don’t really feel aligned to anymore.”
Aldean has been a platinum-selling success since releasing his self-titled debut album in 2005. The Macon, Georgia-native has launched 10 No. 1 nation hits, 21 High 40 successes on the pop charts, earned 5 Grammy nominations, collaborated with Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson and Ludacris, and was named artist of the last decade on the 2019 Academy of Nation Music Awards.
However the star has additionally been a controversial determine whereas being a chart-topping singer. In 2015, Aldean dressed as Lil Wayne for Halloween, sporting blackface and a wig of lengthy black dreadlocks. He publicly cheated on his ex-wife Jessica Ussery in 2012 with present spouse Brittany Aldean, apologizing for the PDA by saying he “had an excessive amount of to drink, let the social gathering get out of hand and acted inappropriately at a bar.” And Brittany Aldean has had her share of mishaps, together with current transphobic feedback that received her husband dropped by his longtime public relations agency.
Although Aldean didn’t write or produce “Attempt That In Small City,” the tune consists of lyrics like: “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and lightweight it up / Yeah, ya suppose you’re powerful / Nicely, attempt that in a small city / See how far ya make it down the street.” Aldean later sings on the tune, “Acquired a gun that my granddad gave me / They are saying in the future they’re gonna spherical up / Nicely, that shit may fly within the metropolis, good luck.”
Philip Ewell, a professor of music concept at Hunter Faculty, says the tune is filled with anti-Blackness rhetoric.
“Proper now, in 2023, we’re having these large disagreements about race and what function it’s performed within the historical past of our nation. And in music, it performs out in these extraordinarily refined methods typically. It’s laborious to disclaim a few of these embedded stereotypes,” he stated. “I’ve listened to a few of Jason Aldean’s music — I believe he’s a fairly good artist. Nevertheless it’s simply one thing that form of comes out in tradition, anti-Blackness. As a result of it’s a part of the founding of our nation. We shouldn’t run away from that straightforward reality.”
Ewell factors to particular lyrics like “pull a gun on the proprietor of a liquor retailer” to drive the purpose house: “Somebody’s robbing a liquor retailer — within the American psyche, the one that’s doing that with out saying it’s a Black individual, proper? It’s simply in our minds. It’s purported to be that approach. And while you paint that image in somebody’s thoughts of somebody pulling a gun on an proprietor of a liquor retailer, the individual pulling the gun is Black. The proprietor of a liquor retailer might be Asian or perhaps white. And there are these racial stereotypes that play out in lyrics like this.”
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“Anyone actually ought to perceive that there’s a powerful racial undertone to those lyrics,” he added. “Race is a part of the lyrics. I believe that’s fairly clear.”
The music video brings the lyrics to life, with photographs of the American flag burning, protests, riots, looting and extra. Aldean, within the clip, performs in entrance of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee — the location of the 1946 Columbia race riot and the 1927 mob lynching of 18-year-old Black teenager Henry Choate.
“What upsets individuals is the coded language and coded footage. You bought a man with a hoodie in a violent act, however it may have been a white man; white guys put on hoodies too. However the implications go far past. And when you’re Black, you’re taking a look at that video a complete lot in a different way than when you’re white,” Cusic stated. “And that’s the dividing issue. Although I believe Aldean was cautious, or the manufacturing firm was cautious to have whites in footage of riots in addition to implying Blacks as a part of the division on this nation, individuals within the metropolitan areas are taking a look at it in a different way than the agricultural areas. People who find themselves Trump supporters are taking a look at it lots in a different way than intelligentsia.”
The success of “Attempt That In a Small City” is momentous for nation music on the pop charts, with Luke Combs’ cowl of Tracy Chapman’s “Quick Automotive” at No. 2 and Morgan Wallen’s “Final Night time,” which spent 14 weeks at No. 1, holding nonetheless in third place.
Cusic says “nation music has an extended custom of extolling the virtues of the agricultural life versus dwelling within the cities” and Gleason namedrops tracks like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Pink, White and Blue (The Indignant American),” Aaron Tippin’s “You’ve Acquired to Stand for One thing” and Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten?” when pondering of songs which can be just like “Attempt That In A Small City.”
However with regards to the video, Aldean had a selected mission in thoughts.
“You’ve got an artist of very robust convictions who had a tune that perhaps he felt wasn’t being heard at its full worth,” Gleason stated. “I believe that he wished to verify his intentions had been clear, and which will have knowledgeable the selections of what the cutaway footage was.”
“They knew what they had been doing,” Cusic defined. “They had been pushing that button for that. There’s a large wall on this nation now — division. And as a substitute of taking among the bricks off the highest of the wall, I believe Aldean added some bricks to that wall, or no less than the video did.”
