In a Jason Aldean video, six seconds have been cut from the TV news report that showed Black Lives Matters demonstrators battling with police after George Floyd’s death in 2020.
But the updates to “Try That in a Small Town” were made because of copyright clearance issues, the country star’s record label, BBR Music Group, The Washington Post — not sensitivity considerations after widespread backlash over wYou can read more about it here the video was shot or over the accusations of racism that surfaced in light of the protest footage used.
Portions of the Fox 5 Atlanta coverage that were removed had also been projected onto an exterior wall of the courthouse Aldean and his band performed in front of for “Try That,” a second-story window from which an 18-year-old Black teen was lynched in 1927.
Watch the updated version of “Try That in a Small Town” here Or above.
Aldean has defended the video, insisting it was not “pro-lynching.” He has not addressed the reason for filming it in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee.
News of the video’s update came a week after it was pulled from the playlist of the Country Music Television channel. CMT did not specify the reason why it removed the video.
Fox News, a conservative outlet, rushed in to defend Aldean when CMT pulled his video. Jeanine Pirro, a cohost on the network’s roundtable talk show “The Five,” went so far as to reason Aldean purposely shot the video in front of the site of the lynching, saying perhaps he was pointing out society’s lack of progress in the nearly 100 years since it happened — and that, today, Black Lives Matter was breaking the law.
