Jason Aldean seems to completely miss the real point of his own song

Well, no one can say that music no longer has the ability to cause visceral reactions. Even though a lot of music is overproduced and the soul of the track goes missing, every once in a while a song comes along that causes a stir for all the wrong reasons. At this point let's enter Exhibit A of the moment: Jason Aldean's "Try This in a Small Town."

Before I go on I will say Jason Aldean has a right to feel how he feels about politics. I don't have to agree with him, and I don't really. But he still has a right to think how he does.

What he shouldn't do, however, is put out a song that is the exact opposite of what he says the tune is about and then be surprised by the reaction. This is especially true when Aldean releases a video, which I won't post here - I am sure you can find it on YouTube or something, that was filmed in front of a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee that held a lynching in 1933. Aldean either doesn't care or didn't know about that fact before creating a video that's so divisive, but either way, that's not OK either.

Jason Aldean shows a lack of self-awareness in the reaction to "Try This in a Small Town"

The track partly uses the false narrative that the government is coming to take people's guns away and then implies there would be violence if the government attempts to do this. There also appear to be clear racial overtones to the song as well. But Aldean says the song is about finding common ground to help solve the issue of gun violence in the United Sates.

Don't take my word for it, though. Here's what Jason Aldean tweeted on Tuesday.

The last part of the tweet says, "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 a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to- that’s what this song is about."

Well, no, Mr. Aldean. That's not what your song is about based on the lyrics. So you either unaware of what you wrote or you are simply a poor songwriter.

Here are the lyrics (all cards on the table, the tweet below is from Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action):

There are several things to unpack about the song. First of all, many like to put forth the thought that the government is coming to take people's guns and this is simply false. This article isn't about whether people should have guns or not, but for Aldean to imply the government is going take guns from people and then implies through the line, ""See how far ya make it down the road," implies there will be violence. If he disputes that, then maybe he isn't aware how the line is worded and that's just pitiful.

So writing a line that there could be violence about an act - the taking of guns - that doesn't really happen creates a more violent culture. And Aldean has witnessed the horrors of gun violence first hand as he was performing at the Route 91 Harvest festival in 2017 when a gunman opened fire on the crowd and killed 58 people. He should be better about creating lyrics that he has to know implies violence.

Also of note is that Aldean is playing with the archetype of a small town being insular and people getting along even though they may have differing views. Aldean isn't actually from a "small town." He's from Macon, Georgia whose population in 1990, when Aldean would have been 13 years old, was 106,698 people. In other words, not small.

Sheryl Crow took umbrage with Aldean saying she was from a small town and that gun violence simply isn't something people just accept. And people shouldn't, of course.

But for Jason Aldean to be so flippant about his song being about something else other than what he literally wrote in the lyrics seems to show a lack of being self-aware. Or uncaring. Or callous. And certainly disrespectful to those 58 people that died at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in 2017.

Other music news and analysis