The story behind the song.
Jason Aldean set off a firestorm of media attention when he released his song “Try That in a Small Town” in 2023, which served as the lead single to Aldean’s eleventh studio album Highway Desperado. It was written by Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy and Kurt Allison, and eventually became a #1 song at country radio.
Most of the controversy, came, though, when Aldean released the music video in July 2023, when accusations came flying that it was racially-motivated, and four days after the video’s release, CMT pulled it from air. Of course, as typically happens with “cancel culture,” whether right or wrong, it only made the song more popular, also becoming a #1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, his first on that chart to date. The week it was pulled, the song also created the biggest sales week for a country song in over 10 years.
And this week, one of the songs writers, Neil Thrasher, who has written tons of country hits like “How Country Feels,” “Night Train,” “Fly Over States” and more, appeared on the God’s Country Podcast, where he spoke about how it came to be:
“Try That in a Small Town is probably the biggest… and much as they tried to kill it, they couldn’t kill it. Funny enough, I had my golf clothes on that Tuesday morning, me and Lovelace write every Tuesday. I said ‘Dude, it’s a beautiful day for golf,’ we tell this story all the time, he goes, ‘I don’t think we’re playing golf today. And I go, ‘What are you talking about? What have you got?’
He was walking that morning, watching the news, and he saw this woman get sucker punched on the sidewalk in New York City, just for no reason… and they were showing that, what was going on in New York City at the time. These people were coming up and hitting people, just for no reason. Do you remember that? Just knocking them out.”
The title popped into his head, and the rest, as they say, is history… though Thrasher didn’t think anyone would actually cut it, he still wanted to write it:
“It just hit him, ‘Try That In a small town, mfer.’ and he goes, ‘Oh.’ So he calls me and said, ‘We ain’t playing golf today.’ He told me the title, I go, ‘God, that is so freaking awesome. Nobody is gonna cut it. We’re not gonna make any money off of that.’ But I did say, ‘We have to write it. We have to write it. Whether it gets cut or not we have to.”
They wrote part of it, then decided to call in some of Jason’s most trusted other writers, recorded a demo and eventually sent it to Aldean.
Thrasher said:
“It took him about as much time to listen to the song to get back to him. He said, ‘I’m cutting this.’”
The writers, Lovelace and Thrasher, had a thousand dollar bet he wouldn’t put it on the radio, but clearly, Aldean wasn’t afraid to take a stand, but when the music video eventually came out, that’s when “all hell broke loose,” as he puts it.
The lovely ladies on The View (sarcasm, in case it’s unclear) were calling them racists, though they obviously already strongly disliked Jason because he has long been a very vocal supporter of President Trump:
“We know why they’re doing it, they can’t stand Jason anyway ‘cuz he’s a Trump supporter. Which is another funny thing, because there are some more artists that are starting to come out from underneath their rocks, they’re starting to be more vocal… you see Carrie Underwood, she’s gonna sing. I love it, I freaking love it.”
Thrasher explained that the song is simply “the truth,” and had no other implications against anyone of any race, or anything else along those lines. He says he’s “proud” the song didn’t get defeated, and even more so of Jason being willing to put it out and stand behind it:
“That song is what it is, it’s the truth, and it’s not against anybody, any race, or anything else. It just is what it is. You’re not gonna come down here and screw around, I don’t care what color you are. You’re not gonna come down here and burn a flag in our town square, it’s not gonna happen. You’re not gonna take our guns, we love to turkey hunt, we love to do things…
I couldn’t wait to write that song, I’m so proud of that song, and what it did do, and what it said, and that it did not get defeated, and it did not get canceled. I’m so proud of that, and so thankful for Jason Aldean. His cojones to put it out and take it.”
Jason even recently performed “Try That in a Small Town” at the Liberty Ball following the inauguration of President Trump last week.
You can watch Thrasher talk about it here:
The music video, in case you somehow missed it before: