Jason Aldean has made his first public appearance since CMT pulled his music video for “Try That in a Small Town” after a backlash ensued saying the song promoted violence.
The country star was at a show in Cincinnati where he addressed the crowd after what he called “a long week” for him.
“I’ve seen a lot of stuff suggesting I’m this, suggesting I’m that,” Aldean said during his concert with the crowd booing in support of him. “Here’s one thing I feel, I feel everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true. What I am is a proud American… 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 my country, I love my family and I will do anything to protect that.”
The audience was then heard chanting “USA! USA! USA!”
Aldean continued, “You guys know how it is, in this day and age, cancel culture is a thing. That’s 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. One thing I saw this week was a bunch of country music fans that can see through a lot of the bullshit. I saw country music fans rally like I’ve never seen before and it was pretty badass, I gotta say. Thank you guys so much.”
The lyrics paired with the images of the music video for “Try That in a Small Town” was what bothered a lot of people. In one part of the song, Aldean sings, “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.”
Sheryl Crow took to social media to call out Aldean saying that his lyrics were “not American or small town-like. It’s just lame.”
Back at the Cincinnati show, Aldean added, “I know a lot of you guys grew up like I did. You kind of have the same values, the same principles that I have, which is we want to take our kids to a movie and not worry about some asshole coming in there shooting up the theater. So somebody asked me, ‘Hey man, you think you’re going to play this song tonight?’ The answer was simple. The people have spoken and you guys spoke very, very loudly this week.”
Check out Aldean’s speech in the TikTok video below.
