Jason Aldean defends ‘Try That In a Small Town’: Common sense

Country star Jason Aldean has doubled down on his defense of the controversial song “Try That in a Small Town” after it was branded pro-lynching and racist.

Aldean, 46, claimed while appearing on the “Coop’s Rockin’ Country Saturday Night” podcast that he was “not sayin’ anything that’s not true.

“If you’ve got common sense, you can look at the video and see, I’m not sayin’ anything that’s not true,” the singer added. “In the video, I’m showin’ you what happened — I didn’t do it, I didn’t create it — it just happened and I saw it, and I’m not cool with it.”

The Post reached out to Aldean for comment.

Aldean’s song, which was originally released in May and went to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, caused massive backlash online after some listeners claimed the singer was promoting violence.

“We put the song out in, I think it was May or something — and the biggest issue, I think, people had when we released the song was that it mentioned ‘having a gun that my grandfather gave me,’” Aldean explained on the podcast. “I mentioned a gun, that’s a no-no right now, and I just remember thinking, ‘Man, you guys haven’t even seen the video yet.’”

Controversy around Aldean’s tune only grew in July after the singer released a video for the song, which showed him and his band outside the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where the 1946 Columbia race riot began and almost led to the lynching of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve in that role.

Columbia was also the site of the 1927 lynching of 18-year-old Henry Choate, who was accused of assaulting a white 16-year-old girl despite her inability to identify Choate as her attacker. All charges were later dropped.

The video also depicts scenes from several protests, including footage from several BLM rallies, which was later cut.

“Between mainstream media and social media, things kind of take on a life of their own,” Aldean said to the show’s host.

“They start making the song and the video into something that it’s not. It’s fine, we just live in a world that does that right now and I’m not gonna go out and explain myself every time somebody gives their own opinion of what my song or video means.”

A day after the video’s release, Aldean took to social media in an attempt to defend himself from those who accused him of being pro-lynching.

“In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests,” the singer wrote in a now-deleted Instagram story. “These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.”

Days after Aldean’s statement, Country Music Television pulled the video from its rotation.

“There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it — and there isn’t a single clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far,” Aldean continued.

Aldean noted that his political views “have never been something” he’s “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,” he concluded, declaring that’s what the song is actually about.