“Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk / Carjack an old lady at a red light / Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store / You think it’s cool…” (The writers really have a bead on what’s hep with the kids in Williamsburg these days.) Soon enough, it’s a Second Amendment anthem filtered through a prism of deep paranoia: “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / That shit may fly in the city / Good luck trying that in a small town.” Who is the mysterious “they” that is coming to confiscate all the shotguns in the deep South? Is it Biden? Maren Morris? Nicolae Carpathia?īut the most heinous thing the small towns of today have to dread, and ward off with threats, is that somebody will “stomp on the flag and light it up.” Of all the tropes from bygone days that country songwriters are nostalgic for, it’s surprising to see flag-burning join the list. (Hard to blame anyone for thinking that this history did show up in Aldean’s or the filmmakers’ web search on the location, but imagining that they knew that and proceeded anyway, as a known dog whistle, is… just tough to contemplate.) Let’s give Aldean and video director Shaun Silva the benefit of the doubt and assume they had not indulged in a history lesson when they decided the same frontage where a Black man was murdered in front of a crowd would be a good place to alternate projected footage of protesters being put down with a draped American flag. It’s where, in 1927, a white lynch mob dragged a young man named Henry Choate through the streets behind a car before finally hanging him from a second-story courthouse window. The setting, outside the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, has proven upsetting for some who know or learn the history of the building. It, too, is in the business of handing out black eyes… to country music, that is, much more than any imagined invaders. “Try That in a Small Town” was risible enough as a single, but in case anything about its lunkheaded songwriting felt like it was left as subtext and not made explicit, Aldean has released a music video for the rising hit.

Ban antique shops now, before it’s too late. You can just see Aldean speaking up at a town council meeting to keep the interlopers out: First, the outsiders visit your charming off-the-interstate vintage stores, then they’ll be back with their BLM protests and Molotov cocktails.

Non country songs about growing up