As country music artist Jason Aldean continues to defend his controversial “Try That in a Small Town” song, its violent music video has quietly undergone some editing.
The video — essentially bigot bait, for those who haven’t seen it — features Aldean singing threats to imagined criminals, suggesting they will be met by gun violence from him or other armed “good ol’ boys” if they try committing crimes in small towns. All the while, viewers are shown images of apparent crimes taking place — many of them, by people of color.
Aldean has made a song that’s wack, both substantively and sonically.
Aldean and his band filmed the video in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee, where a Black teenager was lynched in the 1920s and an infamous race riot spurred by a violent, white mob broke out in the 1940s.
Images of violence and clashes at civil rights protests are interspersed throughout the video, with a clip of a Black Lives Matter protest projected onto the courthouse at one point.
But, as NBC News reported on Wednesday, the video has been edited since its release earlier this month to remove some BLM footage, including the scene projected onto the courthouse.
According to NBC News:
On Wednesday, a scene where a Fox 5 clip depicting a Black Lives Matter protest in Atlanta projected onto the courthouse was no longer in the official video. The video is also roughly seven seconds shorter, according to a cached version on Google search and the updated version on YouTube. A representative for Aldean declined to comment. Fox 5 Atlanta did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
Aldean’s record label told The Washington Post “the video footage was edited due to third party copyright clearance issues.” Fox 5 has not responded to NBC News’ request for comment.
As NBC News noted, Aldean has also been dragged online for using clips from stock image websites in his video, including some that weren’t even made in the United States.
From the report:
Aldean’s claims that there wasn’t a single clip used in his video that was not “real news footage” has also been challenged and debunked online. Destinee Stark, a graphic designer and activist, made a TikTok video showing that at least one clip was a commercial stock image of a molotov cocktail produced by a European company. Multiple clips were also found on stock image websites by NBC News, including one clip from a 2013 protest in Ukraine and another from Canada with no context listed.
Here, Aldean has made a song that’s wack, both substantively and sonically. It’s derivative trash, in the same vein as the many other poppy, twangy country music songs that celebrate vigilante violence.
It’s formulaic as hell, and I say that as someone who listens to all sorts of musicians — including some who do things I disagree with. But I insist this song’s popularity is a tremendous self-own for the bigoted white people it appears to be aimed toward. Pray these people develop some taste, y’all. And some morality, too.
Because without it, you can be sure Aldean and others like him will sing the cash from their pockets — and with weak vocal range, at that.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.