Front Burner - Jason Aldean and country music’s culture war

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Jason Aldean is one of contemporary country radio’s most played voices, and he’s no stranger to controversy. He’s been accused of misogynist comments, worn blackface at Halloween, taken an anti-mask stance during the pandemic and, last year, his wife’s transphobic comments got him dropped by his long-time PR firm. Now, his latest single, “Try That in a Small Town” is facing backlash. Depending on who you ask, it’s either an ode to old-fashioned community values, or a racist dog-whistle. Today, Elamin Abdelmahmoud, the host of CBC’s Commotion, is here to talk about the song, where the controversy is coming from, and how it all connects to a deeper divide that’s hounding country music. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. You're listening to Try That in a Small Town. It's the latest song from country superstar Jason Aldean,

one of contemporary country radio's most played voices. And depending on who you ask, it's either an ode to good old-fashioned small-town values or a racist dog whistle. Around here we take care of our own. You cross that line, it won't take long for you to find out. I recommend you don't. On Monday, country music television said it was pulling the video after just four days in rotation. But on iTunes, as of Thursday, the song was sitting at number one. Thursday, the song was sitting at number one. Today, my colleague Elamin Abdelmahmoud is here. He's a self-professed country music fan and the host of CBC's Commotion. We're going to talk about the song, where the controversy is coming from, and how it all connects to a deeper divide that's always plagued country music. Hey, Elamin. Hi, Tamara. So nice to have you on the show. Thanks so much for doing this.

Oh my God. Thank you for having me do this. This is a lifelong dream come true, which is to say, to talk about country music with anyone at all times and any time. So let's just start with some of the lyrics to this song. The first verse, it lists off a series of things. I'm just going to read some of the lines. Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk, carjack an old lady at a red light, pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store, cuss out a cop, spit in his face, stomp on the flag and light it up. What kind of image is being conjured up in the song about cities versus small towns? There's something sneaky going on here a little bit, which is to say, like, the first little bit of that is not particularly new ground for country music. The idea that like,

hey, city life sucks and it's much more dangerous and much more hostile to life and country living is much more, you know, is a better way of life. That's just like been the bread and butter of country music for decades or so. But the sneaking line in there, the cussing out a cop, the idea that by simply protesting in front of a police officer, then you're sort of equating that with the crime of carjacking an old woman in a traffic light. That is, I think, something that is pretty significant that is going on here in this song. I think it's trying to say there's a certain ethos of life that we don't really appreciate in this imaginary Jason Aldean small town conception. And people have pointed out that

some of the lyrics are racist dog whistles. And I wonder if you can unpack that a little bit. What are they referring to? So the song has been out since May. This is not a new song, but the video came out. And when the video came out, it sort of paired a lot of pretty problematic imagery with some of the ideas that are going on in the song. So in the video, you see this footage of crimes in progress. And then it cuts to footage of Black Lives Matter protesters getting in the video, you see this footage of crimes in progress, and then it cuts to footage

of Black Lives Matter protesters getting in the face of police officers and the idea that those are somehow the same. And if should you try that in a small town, you'll find yourself in trouble. That's sort of that's the conceit of the song. To me, where some people are sort of finding the dog whistle is trying to say, Jason Aldean is specifically trying to say any of this anti-cop stuff, any of this sort of more diverse stuff that is going on in cities, we don't really welcome that in the small town. That's the dog whistle that some people are drawing a connection to. And I think the other large thing is where the video is set. So where you see Jason Aldean is in front of this courthouse that is mostly famous for one thing, which is being the site of a lynching sometime in the 1920s. of lynching sometime in the 1920s. The idea that Jason Aldean didn't know that about the setting of his video is the thing that is contentious.

Because if you believe he knew that, then he's doing something very deliberate, which is to say, I'm hearkening back to the imagery of lynching when I say, hey, you should try your liberal politics in a small town. But if you believe he didn't know that, then maybe you believe all this thing is just kind of concocted by some kind of liberal media. And he's put out a statement about this, which I'll read. He wrote on Twitter that the song is about the feeling of a community that he grew up with, quote, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief, because they were our neighbors. And that was above any differences. My political views have never been something I've hidden from. And I know that a lot of us in this country don't agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy,

where we go at least a day without reading a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to, that's what the song is about. But in that statement, he hasn't explained why the video uses footage of the Black Lives Matter protests, for example, or the filming location, right? In that statement, I'm just not actually entirely clear whether Jason Aldean has heard the Jason Aldean song because the song is entirely about not coming together. It's specifically about coming after somebody who disagrees with your set of politics. It's specifically about coming after somebody

who disagrees with your set of politics. It's entirely about saying, if you don't adhere to the way that we live, then should you, quote unquote, try that in a small town, you will find yourself in trouble. You'll find yourself faced with Jason Aldean, who is standing there with the gun that he inherited from his grandfather. This is not a song about healing America. This is a song specifically about actually stoking those divisions. I think there's a fantasy of like the small town that Jason Aldean is singing about. And then there's a reality. Someone on Twitter pointed out that Jason Aldean himself has never lived in a small town, which I think is like a worthwhile thing to mention here. But it is true that the urban rural divide in America is probably America's

foremost political fault line. That is 100% true in terms of the data bears this out in terms of how people vote, in terms of how people are polarized. But is Jason Aldean trying to say, we should come together here? No, he's actually, he's written a song about vigilantism. That is kind of the opposite of what he's saying in his statement. I don't think that's a controversial thing to say. I think he's literally just trying to say, I wrote a song about how we should come together. And the song has nothing about that. Yeah.

So the lyrics in the chorus are try that in a small town. See how far you make it down the road. Round here we take care of our own. You cross that line. It won't take long for you to find out. I recommend you don't. Not exactly community vibes. That's a threat, Tamara. It's not even an implicit threat. That is like, I recommend you don't find out. That's how one issues a threat to a person listening, right? It's not, it is a quite overtly threatening lyrics.

Anyway, the video is really dark. It almost looks like a politician's scare ad, an attack ad. It's a politically stark kind of environment, yes. Yeah. And since it came out, there has been a wave of backlash. And we've kind of touched on some of this. But where are those criticisms coming from? So CMT, which is a major country music television station, has pulled the video. Country singer Jason Aldean is defending his new music video after it was pulled this video yet. So there's no clarity as to why they pulled it. But we've heard from people like Sheryl Crow, for example, a significant name in the world of country music. Sheryl Crow even tweeted about the song saying, I'm from a small town.

Even people in small towns are sick of violence. There's nothing small town or American about promoting violence. Jason Aldean, out of all people, should know better than to sort of signal at violence. And what she's referring to there is the fact that he was the person on stage when that massive mass shooting in Las Vegas happened. In a matter of seconds, a country music festival turned tragic, a storm of gunfire raining down upon an innocent crowd. Police say the shooter was on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel across the Vegas Strip. Desaldine left the stage unscathed. 60

people died in that shooting. I think a couple hundred people were injured during that shooting. So it was one of those shootings that became a defining moment in America. And it happened at his show. You would think that he would have a different relationship to referring to violence and referring to gun violence. You sort of reference the starkness of the imagery of the video. A lot of people have kind of taken it to mean a way of signaling some Republican politics relatively explicitly. And that's not out of line with Jason Aldean himself. And so I think the signals are, for a lot of people, that this is a very political message and it's meant to be received that way.

Yeah. You mentioned CMT. They pulled the video pretty quickly, but what's the reaction been from country music radio? So it's really important to mention to people that radio in the context

of country music is like everything. Country really cares about radio. In other genres, you could get away with becoming pretty big purely based on streaming. Not the case in country music. Country music, you really rely on radio. The song has been added by 125, I think, radio stations across the US. However, what's really important is we got to watch to see what happens and react to this controversy. Because do they start playing this more?

Because people will request it more because people are talking about this conversation more than ever. Or do they also draw a line similar to CMT? Right now they're playing the song, but it's not anywhere near the top 10 yet. We'll have to find out next week. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens there. top 10 yet. We'll have to find out next week. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens there. So for people who are not familiar with Jason Aldean, who is this guy and what role does he play in the country music scene? Listen, if you're not familiar with Jason Aldean, that tells me that you're not familiar with country music at all, which is fair enough.

Jason Aldean is one of the most successful artists of his generation. He's like not an outlier. He's not some random guy trying to create a controversy in order to get big. He is as mainstream as it gets. Like this is someone who's put out, I think, a little under 40 singles over his whole career. And maybe 30 of them have gone to number one. Like, he has consistently been successful. In 2019, he won the Academy of Country Music's big award,

which is like the Artist of the Decade Award. It's an honor to present you with the ACM Dick Clark Artist of the Decade Award. So he's a really significant figure in that way. But he's also someone who has been friends with Donald Trump. They love him in country land, but they love him all over the world. Number one, he's the number one country star, Jason Aldean. He's someone who's been kind of explicit about his mega politics. Brittany Aldean, his wife, made some comments criticizing gender affirming care for trans kids. I think it was like late last year or so.

And in response, Jason Aldean's PR firm ended up dropping him after that. So he has been kind of a little bit embedded, I would say, in how Republican politics are developing. And he's kind of become an avatar of that, a bit more comfortably an avatar of that in the last few years. But he's had a tremendously successful career, especially over the last like 10 years or so.

Yeah. And do we know much beyond this controversy about his racial politics? I mean, Jason Aldean, every once in a while, has a way of creating some headlines. And in 2015, he dressed up like Lil Wayne. This is a guy who in 2015 would have had a couple of number one songs and then would have been making the choice explicitly to wear blackface, to wear blackface to a party where everyone can see him do that. A couple of years later on stage, he wears a Confederate shirt, a Confederate flag shirt on stage. Again, it's a symbol that a lot of people associate with racism because a lot of people associate it with like a pro-slavery South. It was in reaction to other country artists saying,

we're going to retire using the Confederate flag. And Jason Aldean says, well, this is an opportunity for me to double down on this. Yeah, yeah, he like leans into it. So not too long ago in 2020, there was another major controversy with Morgan Wallen when he was caught using the N-word on video. And at that time, this was in the aftermath of the summer of protests, racial justice protests. He was dropped from country radio and his contract was suspended with his label. How did that end up panning out for him?

Fine. And by that, I mean, he was dropped from his label and his management for a brief period of time. He was kind of put on ice. It seemed like the country establishment was going to take some kind of stand. I was going to say, you know what? We can't really tolerate this behavior, which is why seeing his label act, seeing his management act, seeing a bunch of seeing radio act and say we're not going to play Morgan Wallen for a little while. The top radio chains have dropped him to Cumulus Media, iHeart Radio, Sirius XM, and several others. Even the Academy of Country Music this morning is announcing that he is no longer eligible for any awards at their ceremony in April. For a few months, it kind of seemed like, you know what? There might be consequences. We might have found the line under which the country music establishment

is going to say, you've now gone too far. We can't really tolerate this behavior. And then he started coming back. He started coming back largely because people kept calling radio stations saying, we want you to play Morgan Wallen. And so more and more, they started playing him. Nothing happened. He released a new single. He got big, it got big, it got bigger. But he sort of became an avatar of you can't cancel one of us. It seemed like the country music establishment and country music, some country music fandom anyway, went a little bit harder in support of Morgan Wallen after that. And he ended up having one of his biggest years ever. He just came back with a new album this year and he's still having a massive year. That album has been on the charts for like an unprecedented 14 weeks at number one

or something. The reason it's different with Jason Aldean is because Morgan Wallen didn't seem to specifically court the crowd that says, you can't cancel me. Jason Aldean is playing to that crowd. Jason Aldean is sort of explicitly trying to say, hey, these people on the left are trying to cancel me and you need to be supportive of me. And I think that's where the two paths kind of diverge. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. You're a big country fan and you've written about country. How pervasive is racism in country music? And like, aside from the song, what does it look

like and what forms does it take? The racism in country music, and when it comes to the establishment, presents itself systemically, which is to say, country music has been around for so long. And do you end up seeing successful Black artists in this genre? No, you don't. They happen far and few in between. Quite often that you hear the refrain, there can only be one. So it's like one at a time. In terms of like at shows and concerts, I think that's sort of a different environment because every person has their different calibration of how they feel in terms of feeling safe at country shows. I feel quite safe at country music shows, but I've heard from a lot of country fans,

black country fans, who say, you know what? I like country music. I wouldn't put myself in that space because I'm not really sure how the people who have those politics might react to my presence in that space. And I think that's a fair sort of reaction. But it tends to be that systemically within the industry, these patterns keep repeating over and over and over again. Country music is very bad at treating Black people specifically, Black women. Black women artists in country music are so poorly supported. There is skepticism from the industry or the skepticism from the labels. And they end skepticism from the labels and they end up facing

that wall and very rarely do they actually end up scaling it but my understanding of the roots of country and correct me if i'm wrong but it took from black music right but one of its defining features now is as the absence of black people so how how did that happen? Is there like a history behind that? Two things. I think I would say one, the idea that the absence of black people in country music is one of the defining features of the genre is like an engineered fact.

It's been engineered into this place. And the second thing is the people doing that engineering didn't do this 10 years ago or 20 years ago. They did this 100 years ago. So 100 years ago in the South, you would have had the exact same black and white bands. They're all playing the same kinds of music. They're playing the exact same kinds of music. They're exchanging the same kinds of musical ideas in the same spaces. And then you get a label system that says, the black artists are going to be marketed as race records, and the white artists are going to be marketed as hillbilly music. And from there on, you kind of begin this lineage.

So race records sort of evolves into R&B, evolves into blues, evolves into all other kinds of genres that we think of as black genres. And hillb blues, evolves into all other kinds of genres that we think of as like black genres. And hillbilly music evolves into what we think of as country music. But that decision was extremely arbitrary and made as far back as 100 years ago. And basically everything that we're seeing now is an outcome of that decision, that decision to sort of specifically to say, well, we're going to market the black artists to black, well, we're going to market the black artists to black people and we're going to market the white artists to white people. And if you grew up in the South, you would have actually maybe seen that this division was entirely artificial and doesn't really make a lot of sense.

You know, Ray Charles put out a country album because to him, like, that's just the kind of music he grew up listening to. put out a country album. Because to him, like, that's just the kind of music that he grew up listening to. But country music as an industry has made a habit of only supporting Black country artists maybe at, like, once-a-generation kind of rate.

I think there's a push now to change that. You know, there's a wonderful class of Black women who are in country music now who people really need to give a lot more space to. But that's the kind of thing that changes so slowly. It seems like things are changing at least a little bit because you have people like Casey Musgraves making country music more welcoming for LGBTQ plus audiences and openly gay artists like Brandi Carlile. The number one song on Billboard's country airplay chart is Luke Holmes's cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman,

which makes her the first black woman to have the sole songwriting credit on a number one country hit. So you have these artists who are challenging industry standards, but you also have people like Jason Aldean, who, based on previous examples of these kinds of controversies, is probably going to be rewarded, probably going to get a lot of airplay. So where do you think this conversation goes next? So we should say we don't know yet whether he's going to be rewarded for this. But I think you're right to say that based on previous examples of this, he will face some kind of it'll turn out OK for him. So one of the things we can refer to is the video that we're talking about. Yes, CMT is not playing it.

But oh, my God, are the YouTube views just racking up on this thing? It is a number one song on iTunes right now. We'll have to see sort of where this lands on the charts, like in a week or two or so. When we talk about the other artists that you're referring to there, the idea that, you know, Kacey Musgraves is challenging the country music establishment by trying to make it a more queer friendly space. Luke Combs does have the number one song in country right now, which is his cover of, of, of a fast car. But each one of these victories is a little bit bittersweet. You know, um, Casey Musgraves was kind of relatively famously, I say this relatively famously because like within the country music establishment famously kind of shunned from the

music, from the country music establishment for some time. In the case of Brandi Carlile, that's someone who has said quite openly, she's like, I don't know if country music belongs to me. I don't know if I have a place within that genre or not. Really great that Tracy Chapman is the first Black woman to have penned a number one song on country radio. But also, it is a little bit bittersweet that she's the first one, because why did it have to be Luke Combs' version doing this? And even more importantly, why hasn't there been a black woman to have sang the number one song and written it as well?

Why hasn't that happened yet? And so all these victories are kind of tempered by that reality. But I think there's a larger conversation, a larger battle over who country music belongs to. And that battle is kind of playing out in the charts, right? Like there's like a sort of a tit-for-tat kind of situation going on between a Jason Aldean who puts out a song like this one that is indicative of a certain set of politics

and, you know, a Maren Morris who writes about the exact opposite set of politics, and also her songs do really well. There's a push and pull there in these two different sort of political camps over who gets to claim what country music is. And there's a definition of country music as backward-looking and nostalgic, as opposed to forward-looking and progressive. I think either way, no matter what happens,

we end up getting a bit of an answer as to how country music is shifting because this little battle over country music has been brewing for some time. And this is just like another dimension of it. Elamin, thank you so much. I love talking to you. Let's do this again.

Dude, anytime. I'm around. Let's do it. All right, that's all for this week. Frontburner was produced by Shannon Higgins, Matt Mews, Derek Vanderwyk, Lauren Donnelly, and Joyta Sengupta. Our intern is Rachel DeGasperis. Our sound design was by Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chavison. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Tamara Kendacker. Thanks so much for listening.

FrontBurner is back next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.