Letter From America

Marion McKeone: Why country music singer Jason Aldean has friends in low places

The singer, who is a January 6 conspiracy theorist and an election denier, claims to have been unaware that the video for his hit single Try That in a Small Town was shot at the site of one of the nation’s worst race-violence atrocities

US country music singer Jason Aldean denies that his song Try That in a Small Town has any racial undercurrents and claims he was unaware of the bloody history of the location depicted in the song’s video. Picture: Amy Harris/Invision/AP

Jason Aldean is one of those country singers you couldn’t pick out of a hillbilly line-up: red of face, truculent of temperament and wholly unburdened by creativity, originality or discernible talent.

He’s another in a long line of country-rock mannequins that the Nashville machine churns out by the dozen: angry white rednecks who peddle belligerence and a swaggering machismo. They were Maga Bros long before the term was invented – these grievance-addled purveyors of Bibles, ...