Country
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Country music embraces a new form of modern love as David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” brings the late British rocker his first shot at a potential songwriting credit on a country hit.
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RCA Nashville released a new Chris Young track, “Young Love and Saturday Nights,” to digital service providers on Sept. 21. The song is an interpolation, built on the chorus melody and iconic, burning guitar riff of Bowie’s proto-punk “Rebel Rebel,” originally issued on the 1974 Diamond Dogs album that RCA distributed in the United States.
It’s easy to be skeptical of the country revision before hearing it — the raw original track was part of Bowie’s androgynous/theatrical period and is now being repurposed as a small-town Southern anthem at a time when many conservatives line up against challenges to gender conformity. But the adaption faithfully re-creates the original’s garage-band drum sound and distorted guitar riff, matching up well with the new version’s working-class lyrics.
“What they were after was the riffs,” suggests Dreamcatcher Management partner Jim Mazza, who signed Bowie to EMI when he headed the label’s global operations in 1983, launching the partnership with the album Let’s Dance.
And Mazza believes Bowie would have been happy with the new recording’s treatment of his classic.
“The British rockers have such a respect for American art — for country music in particular,” says Mazza, who has no affiliation with the new recording. “It wasn’t just The Rolling Stones. It wasn’t just The Beatles. It was Queen, and it was Bowie, and it was Kate Bush, serious British recording artists. I think David would have been like, ‘Oh my God, can you believe this? A serious country artist, Chris Young, is recording one of my songs. I’m really excited about this.’ ”
Though Bowie’s name has never appeared in a co-writing credit on a top 20 country single, he has subtly influenced the genre in the past. “Let’s Dance” was partial inspiration for a section in the album version of Brothers Osborne’s “Shoot Me Straight”; producer Jay Joyce (Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson) patterned the drum sound on Gary Allan’s “It Ain’t the Whiskey” after the tone on “Five Years,” the opening cut on Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust; Aaron Watson gave a shoutout to “Rebel Rebel” in “Outta Style”; and Eric Church mimicked the pitch-shifting vocal descent in Bowie’s “Fame” on his own “Creepin’.”
“It was weird,” Church said at the time. “There are some people out there, especially in the country genre, that didn’t understand what that [gimmick] was, but that’s exactly what it was.”
The Bowie interpolation might be very well-timed. Classic rock consumption is on the rise; country music recently had the top two songs on the Billboard Hot 100 — including Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” — and interpolations of Jo Dee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California” and Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” have led to recent successes for Cole Swindell and Jake Owen, respectively.
“The avant garde nature of a Bowie song is something that’s pretty adventuresome for [country],” suggests Mazza, “and I think it’s a really healthy idea in today’s world where there are no boundaries anymore.”
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After topping out at No. 3 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart with his RCA Nashville debut, “Wild as Her,” Corey Kent’s follow-up has an even wilder image embedded in its second verse, in which the singer notes that he “broke 100 on two wheels.”
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It’s not just a story. Pressed on that detail, Kent points to a motorcycle he used to own, a muscular Indian Scout Bobber that looked as if it was built for speed. He felt obliged to find out just how fast it could go.
“That was a really fun bike,” Kent recalls. “You get a new bike, you got to test the parameters of it and get comfortable with it. And so it definitely happened in Texas. You can find a nice stretch of road and really get after it.”
Kent’s triple-digit thrill ride is just one of numerous daredevil acts — from roller coasters to love — that make their way into “Something’s Gonna Kill Me,” a song that emphasizes his passion for life on the edge.
The topic arrived during an October 2022 creative retreat in the Dallas area, where Kent and three songwriting buddies -— Lydia Vaughan (“If I Didn’t Love You”), Austin Goodloe and Joybeth Taylor — knocked out six songs. “We got an Airbnb, this pink house,” muses Goodloe. “We’re just like, ‘Well, this is awesome. We’re in Barbie Dreamland here.’ ”
At one point, Kent got to his feet and expounded on his penchant for risky adventures, lamenting how often others insist he needs to live more carefully. “My response to that was always, ‘Get busy living or get busy dying,’ ” he notes. “There are things in life that have big risk. But if they add to your enjoyment, then maybe it’s worth it. You got to figure out what works for you.”
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His co-writers honed in on that sentiment, and as they explored other ways of saying it, Kent philosophized further about life: “Something’s gonna kill me at some point, so I might as well enjoy it.” The first part of that clicked as a title — Vaughan insisted they write it down — and they listed a handful of potentially addictive pursuits that can place body, life or soul in peril, including the highway, whiskey, smoking and songwriting. “I would live in a cardboard box before I quit writing songs,” says Vaughan.
They attacked the chorus first, and as it reached the “Something’s gonna kill me” hook, they realized that phrase served better as the chorus’ setup, forcing them to find another last line that would rhyme with “One day I’m gonna die.” Initially, it became a breakup song; thus, what killed the singer “might as well be this heart of mine.” But they shifted into a philosophical motif and freestyled other options –— for a few minutes, they laughingly subbed in “Something’s gonna kill me/ Might as well be pizza pie” — before they finally landed on “If something’s gonna kill me/ Might as well be what makes me feel alive.”
Once the chorus was done (or almost done; they would come back to it later), they focused on the opening verse, launching with a recollection of a California sunset. That doesn’t directly describe any risk-taking, though it still fits the song’s general attitude. “That line kind of implies some sort of free-spiritedness,” Vaughan says. “None of us are from California, so it implies the travel, implies the exploring and then it also, to me, implied kind of an all-nighter — like, ‘Hey, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I’ve got things to do.’ ”
The rest of the two verses matched dangerous events to an adventurous, galloping guitar, and the energy in the room mirrored the spirit they were trying to portray. “We’re just standing up and screaming at the top of our lungs — I’m sure the neighbors from the Airbnb thought we were crazy,” says Goodloe. “It’s the most adrenaline that I’ve felt while writing a song. Usually, you’re sitting down with an acoustic guitar and everyone’s kind of being quiet. And we were standing up, running around the living room of this pink house, just screaming, ‘If something’s gonna kill me.’ ”
Before it was over, they inserted a rising melody into the pre-chorus at the end of verse one, then finished the chorus by stretching the final syllable of the stanza’s last word, “alive,” into five upward-moving notes. The pre-chorus and tag gave the chorus a subtle, and unintended, symmetry.
“It just popped out, and it is nice that there’s a theme of ascending notes,” Goodloe says. “I feel like the whole song, if you saw it on a graph, it’s just climbing the whole time — like melodically, lyrically, the energy. It’s cool that there is an anchor on each side of the chorus. They’re related.”
Goodloe finished the demo back in Nashville, working with the same level of adrenaline during that part of the process, and the song got an extra dose of it once Kent took “Something’s Gonna Kill Me” into a session with producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Lainey Wilson).
Guitarists Charlie Worsham and Rob McNelley turned the galloping foundation into a more elaborate opening pattern, contrasted with descending electric guitar chords. Joyce dropped in a number of unusual, spiky sounds over the track’s four-on-the-floor drumbeat and lobbed a whistling explosion that led into an instrumental break. The guitar solo took a gnarly, upward tack before everything dropped out, leaving Kent’s vocal fully exposed to launch the final chorus. That move wasn’t planned; Joyce signaled it to the players as the solo transpired, and the rest of the team followed his lead perfectly.
After the cut, Kent asked the engineer if they could get a playback of his vocal, but Joyce intervened.“Jay literally ran halfway across the room, waving his arms like, ‘No, no, no, don’t do it,’ ” recalls Kent. “He goes, ‘If you can’t hear it in the track, if it doesn’t bother you as you’re listening to it as a whole, there’s no reason to pick it out and pick it apart.’ He goes, ‘Stop overthinking. We’re human, we’re imperfect. It’s meant to be that way.’ It was one of the best lessons I’ve ever had.”
Worsham added harmonies, and the entire production made “Something’s Gonna Kill Me” an edgy musical statement. “The final cut was a little riskier and outside the box [than the demo], which is what that song needed,” Kent says.
It definitely connected with the audience. Outside of the established “Wild As Her,” “Kill Me” is the most streamed track from Kent’s Blacktop album on Spotify, garnering three times as many plays as any other non-single from the package. It was an easy choice for the next single, released by RCA Nashville to country radio July 5 via PlayMPE. The dangerous theme solidifies his brand, and the sound is just different enough to separate him from the pack. That’s a risk/reward scenario Kent can embrace.
“Nobody great,” he says, “ever sounded like anybody else.”
Colter Wall hits No. 1 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart (dated July 29), thanks to the arrival of his fourth studio album, Little Songs.
The set, released July 14 via La Honda/RCA Records, debuts at No. 4 on Americana/Folk Albums, No. 17 on Top Country Albums and No. 75 on the Billboard 200 with 12,000 equivalent album units earned in its opening week, according to Luminate. It also starts at No. 8 on Vinyl Albums (5,000 sold on vinyl) and No. 9 on Top Album Sales (8,000 in total album sales).
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Little Songs is Wall’s third, and highest-charting, album to hit the Billboard 200, following 2018’s Songs of the Plains (No. 180 peak) and 2020’s Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs (No. 103).
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Wall is the fourth country act to top the Emerging Artists chart this year, following Jelly Roll (who led for nine weeks in 2023, among 28 total weeks on top), Nate Smith (one week in May) and Megan Moroney (four weeks in May-June).
Rounding out the top five on Emerging Artists, NewJeans dip 1-2, C418 jumps 8-3, Kaliii falls 2-4 and Coco Jones rises 7-5.
Just outside the Emerging Artists top five, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real re-enter at No. 9, ranking on the chart for the first time since 2021, thanks to the band’s new album, Sticks and Stones. The set, released July 14 on 6ACE/Thirty Tigers, debuts at No. 37 on Top Album Sales with 3,000 copies sold.
The top debut on the Emerging Artists chart this week belongs to JT, at No. 24. The former City Girls member bows thanks to her new solo single “No Bars,” released via Quality Control/Motown/Capitol Records. The track debuts at No. 38 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
City Girls spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the Emerging Artists chart in 2019-20. That’s the fourth-longest reign since the list launched in 2017, after Jelly Roll (28 weeks), NLE Choppa (24) and Lauv (14).
The Emerging Artists chart ranks the most popular developing artists of the week, using the same formula as the all-encompassing Billboard Artist 100, which measures artist activity across multiple Billboard charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200. (The Artist 100 lists the most popular acts, overall, each week.) However, the Emerging Artists chart excludes acts that have notched a top 25 entry on either the Hot 100 or Billboard 200, as well as artists that have achieved two or more top 10s on Billboard’s “Hot” song genre charts and/or consumption-based “Top” album genre rankings.
Jason Aldean’s controversial “Try That in a Small Town” music video was seemingly edited to remove imagery of a Black Lives Matter protest after the clip received backlash, with critics claiming that the video contained racist pro-gun, pro-lynching messaging.
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According to The Washington Post, the video is not now six se conds shorter than when it was originally shared on July 14. There is no longer a clip from Fox 5 Atlanta depicting violent interactions during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.
Billboard has reached out to Aldean’s team for more information.
Last week, the country singer responded to recent claims that “Try That in a Small Town” is a “modern lynching song.” The song challenges those who “pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store” or “cuss out a cop” to, as the title suggests, try those actions in a small town and “see how far ya make it down the road.” The song’s video features footage of an American flag burning, protesters having confrontations with police, looters breaking a display case and thieves robbing a convenience store.
“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 a comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests,” Jason wrote in his statement. “These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it and there isn’t a single video 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.”
He later addressed the controversy during his Ohio concert on Friday (July 21). “It’s been a long week and I’ve seen a lot of stuff suggesting I’m this, suggesting I’m that,” Aldean told the crowd in a fan-captured video. “I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
He added, “What I am is a proud American. I’m proud to be from here. I love our country. I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bulls— started happening to us. I love my country, I love my family, and I will do anything to protect that, I can tell you that right now.”
CMT has since pulled the video from its rotation after running it for three days, while Aldean’s wife, Brittany Aldean, came to his defense. On the other hand, stars like Sheryl Crow and Margo Price have spoken out against Jason Aldean’s choice to perform and release the song.
When the nominations for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards are announced on Nov. 10, two country hits could be in the running for record of the year for the first time since Jimmy Carter was President.
Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” and Luke Combs’ remake of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” both have a very good chance of making the finals. Wallen’s song has logged 23 weeks atop Hot Country Singles. “Fast Car” has logged 12 weeks at No. 2. (Both songs dropped one rung this week, to Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, with the re-entry in the top spot of Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.”)
Combs’ hit probably has a better chance of being nominated than Wallen’s does. Combs has received six Grammy nominations over the years (though he has yet to win). And Chapman’s original version was nominated for record and song of the year. Wallen has yet to be nominated for a Grammy, so there’s no evidence yet that Grammy voters are ready to forgive and forget the 2021 incident where he was videotaped using a racial pejorative.
If both hits are nominated, this would be the first time in 46 years that two or more country hits have competed in this marquee category. (We define a country hit as a song that made the top 20 on Hot Country Songs.) In 1977, three top five country hits vied for record of the year – Crystal Gayle’s elegant torch ballad “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” (which topped the country chart for four weeks), Linda Ronstadt’s exquisite pop/country version of Roy Orbison’s 1963 pop hit “Blue Bayou” (which reached No. 2) and Debby Boone’s megahit rendition of the Oscar-winning ballad “You Light Up My Life” (which reached No. 4).
In three earlier years, two or more country hits competed for record of the year. In 1967, Glen Campbell’s sublime reading of Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” (a No. 2 country hit) vied with Bobbie Gentry’s enigmatic pop/country crossover smash “Ode to Billie Joe” (a No. 17 country hit).
The following year, for the first and so far only time in Grammy history, three No. 1 country hits competed for record of the year. They were Jeannie C. Riley’s reading of Tom T. Hall’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” Bobby Goldsboro’s tearjerker ballad “Honey” and Campbell’s version of another Webb classic, “Wichita Lineman.” The Riley and Goldsboro hits each topped the country chart for three weeks; Campbell’s smash headed it for two.
In 1975, Campbell’s sleek version of Larry Weiss’ “Rhinestone Cowboy” and Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes” competed for the prize. “Rhinestone Cowboy” topped the country chart for three weeks. “Lyin’ Eyes” reached No. 8 on the country chart.
In 1979, two record of the year nominees had charted on Hot Country Songs, but only one of them was a home-run country hit. That’s Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” which topped the country chart for three weeks on its way to becoming his signature song. The other is a pop smash – Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” – that was covered by Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, one of the top country duos of the era. Both versions entered Hot Country Singles – as the chart was then called – on Nov. 25, 1978. But whereas the version by Brown and Cornelius made the top 10, the version by Barbra & Neil stalled at No. 70. (It had star-power to burn, but you can practically hear country programmers saying “It just isn’t country.”)
In recent years, it has been hard for even one country hit to wind up with a Grammy nod for record of the year. The last five country hits to be nominated in that marquee category (again defining a country hit as a song that reached the top 20 on Hot Country Songs) were Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road” (No. 19 in 2019), Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together) (No. 1 for 10 weeks in 2012), Lady A’s “Need You Now” (No. 1 for five weeks in 2010), Swift’s “You Belong With Me” (No. 1 for two weeks in 2009) and Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” (No. 1 for one week in 1998).
The Recording Academy expanded the number of nominees in each of the Big Four categories (including record of the year) from five to eight in 2018. They expanded it again to 10 in 2021, but have announced that they are dropping it back down to eight for the nominations that will be announced on Nov. 10.
Miranda Lambert is mourning the death of one of her beloved dogs, Thelma. Thelma was one of two Great Pyrenees dogs — alongside Louise — that Lambert adopted on May 1, 2016, bringing them to her farm outside Nashville. Lambert named the two dogs Thelma and Louise in honor of the 25th anniversary of the […]
Jung Kook’s “Seven,” featuring Latto, and Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” debut at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, on the July 29-dated Billboard Global 200. It’s only the third time in the 150-week history of Billboard’s global charts that the top two songs are debuts by different artists. But while Jung Kook also opens atop the other global chart – the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. survey – Aldean is nowhere to be found on it.
The Global 200 ranks songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world. The Global Excl. U.S. chart does the same but excludes domestic consumption, measuring the biggest hits outside the United States.
Since these two global charts launched in September 2020, there has been plenty of crossover, with No. 1 songs aligning 100 times, or two out of every three weeks on average. This week’s top 10 on the Global 200 shares eight songs with the top 10 of the Global Excl. U.S. chart. The two that miss are Gunna’s “Fukumean,” inching 7-6 on the former and surging 44-22 on the latter, and “Try That in a Small Town.”
But Aldean isn’t just outside the top 10 of Global Excl. U.S. – his hit misses the 200-position chart altogether. That makes it the highest-ranking song on the Global 200 to simultaneously be absent from its sister survey since they started three years ago. Previously, Future held that distinction, when “Puffin on Zootiez” and “712PM” hit Nos. 7 and 11, respectively, on the May 14, 2022-dated worldwide ranking.
“Try That in a Small Town” makes a notable sales-powered bow, with 233,000 downloads sold worldwide in the week ending July 20, according to Luminate. The song was released May 19 but makes its global chart debut after CMT pulled the song’s music video three days after premiering (July 14), resulting in a surge of attention.
That six-digit figure is the third-best sales week since the charts launched, behind only the 269,000 for Jung Kook’s “Seven” this week, and BTS’ “Butter,” which debuted on the June 5, 2021-dated list with 249,000.
While Aldean manages the best non-BTS/BTS-related sales week in the global charts’ archives, his track’s streaming count of 11.1 million ranks 196th among this week’s 200 charting titles.
Those figures skew dramatically toward Stateside consumption, with 98% of the song’s worldwide sales and 96% of its streams stemming from the U.S. That towers over the averages among this week’s charting titles (beyond Aldean’s): 52% and 22%, respectively. Aldean’s domestic totals contrast with just 5,000 downloads and 403,000 streams from outside the U.S. during the tracking week, not enough to crack the Global Excl. U.S. chart – even if it were expanded to 600 positions.
“Try That in a Small Town” is a country song, and country has long struggled to export outside the confines of the U.S. Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” with its 14 weeks at No. 1 on the U.S.-based Billboard Hot 100, has managed to climb as high as No. 82 on Global Excl. U.S., far removed from its top 10 peak on the Global 200. Otherwise, besides Taylor Swift and holiday titles, Luke Combs is the only other core country act (in a lead role) to have appeared on the chart, as “Forever After All” spent a week at No. 105 in 2020. But not even his current crossover, a cover of Tracy Chapman’s 1989 classic “Fast Car,” is charting, despite being No. 21 on the Global 200 and No. 4 on the Hot 100.
Still, when Combs hit the global charts in 2020, 16% of the song’s streams and 10% of its sales were from outside the U.S in its debut week, indicating some interest outside his home country. Wallen, on both of this week’s editions, is up to 25% and 15% from international territories.
So while, yes, Aldean’s mere association with country music means he’s likely to spur far more U.S. activity than pop, rock or Latin acts, his international draw of 4% in streams and 2% in sales are unprecedented for such a huge hit on the Global 200.
The song’s messaging (or its controversy – however you choose to look at it) is deeply American. Even the title touches on the iconography of U.S. small towns, and its lyrics point to social hot topics. Its official video, and subsequent removal from CMT, pushed the song into the national spotlight, the clip interspersing news footage with small-town scenes to amplify the song’s references to violence and crime.
The specificity and the inevitable political fallout of “Try That in a Small Town” seemingly limits the song’s international prospects, cutting its non-U.S. sales and streams to a fraction of even those by fellow country singles. Meanwhile, although Aldean doesn’t chart on any of Billboard’s Hits of the World charts outside of North America, it debuts at No. 36 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100, where Wallen and Combs sit at Nos. 1-2.
Apple Music is launching the new series Lost & Found to spotlight country songwriters and a handful of never-before-released songs. The series features six demos (the “Lost” part) in addition to versions of these songs recorded by established and rising country artists (the “Found” part).
“Need a Favor” and “Son of a Sinner” hitmaker Jelly Roll is the first artist taking part in the program with his version of “Dragging These Roots,” a song written by songwriters Ben Hayslip, Josh Thompson and Jesse Frasure that Apple Music’s team first heard in 2019.
“When Apple Music shared the concept with me, I immediately called Frasure on FaceTime from their listening room to let him know I was definitely cutting the song,” Jelly Roll told Apple Music. “I’m so grateful to Apple Music for shining a light on all these creators and their great artistry.”
“I was so excited to hear this lost song got found by Jelly Roll,” Frasure told Apple Music. “It’s one of my favorites that I’ve co-written, and I was hoping it would eventually get to see the light of day. Having one of my favorite artists and friends, Jelly Roll, be the one to cut it was icing on the cake. We had a great time going into the studio on this one, he’s a truly soulful singer behind the scenes, and he put so much heart into it. I can’t wait!”
Additionally, Apple Music is launching Lost & Found Radio, a monthly companion radio show hosted by singer/songwriter Lori McKenna, who is known for penning hits including Tim McGraw’s “Humble and Kind” and Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush,” and who just released her latest album, 1988. Each of the six Lost & Found Radio episodes will include in-depth background on each song and deep dives into the creative process with each song’s original songwriter(s), studio musicians, producers and the artists recording the songs.
The Lost & Found program will be highlighted Tuesday (July 25) with a live radio episode, beginning at 2 p.m. CT, co-hosted by Apple Music Country host Kelleigh Bannen and featuring songwriters whose works are being featured as part of Lost & Found. A Lost & Found Live Broadcast Special will air Tuesday (July 25) at noon CT.
Lost & Found will also have its own dedicated space on Apple Music where listeners can find playlists for the lost demos, the newfound singles, the Lost & Found Radio show episodes, and playlists from more participating songwriters.
“I’m so thrilled to be a part of this initiative and host the companion radio show on Apple Music Country,” McKenna said in a statement. “Every songwriter has a catalog full of lost songs. It’s exciting that Apple is bringing these almost hits to life and giving some space to these writers, and the stories behind these songs.”
“At Apple Music, we are passionate about celebrating and championing artists and creators,” said Kelleigh Bannen, Apple Music Country’s host. “From advocating for the songwriters, to highlighting the enormous wealth of untapped music, Lost & Found is emblematic of what we do every day, not just here in Nashville, but worldwide. We’re so excited to continue marching towards that mission and look forward to inviting incredible artists to partner with us in unique ways like this.”
Jason Aldean dared his audience to “Try That in a Small Town” — so one TikTok user decided to take him up on the offer.
In a TikTok posted on Saturday (July 22), former minor league baseball player Danny Collins did a deep dive on one of Aldean’s promotional TikToks for his controversial song released back in May. Zooming in on a newspaper article in the background of one of the video’s shots, Collins found that it appears to be a piece pulled from a since-discontinued small newspaper from Mississippi.
Finding the original article in an online archive, Collins shared that the clipping used for the video looks to be from a 1956 issue of The Petal Paper in Petal, Miss., in which a public relations consultant for the NAACP wrote to the publication’s editor P.D. East, commending him for using his platform to ridicule white supremacists and criticize the Jim Crow era policy of segregation in schools.
“Never have I seen anything that startled me as much as the March 15 issue of the Petal Paper with its incredible ridiculing of the White Citizens Council crowd. I’m referring specifically to the full-page as I assume you wrote headed, ‘You Too, Can Be Superior,’” the letter read. “I hope I am not congratulating a dead man. This must have taken courage and I hope you are still with us.”
Collins goes on to read portions of East’s response letter, in which the editor detailed being called an “N-lover,” losing subscriptions to his paper and being “bothered and harassed” continually by citizens of his town. In a 1971 column written for The New York Times, East further detailed his experience, saying his open criticism of school segregation led to him losing every subscriber of the Petal Paper, and at one point receiving three death threats in a single week.
In closing his TikTok, Collins pointed back to the accusations against Aldean of including thinly veiled racist dogwhistles throughout his song’s video, saying that the inclusion of this letter to East in the promotional clip felt very on the nose. “Why would this happen to Mr. P.D. East? Because he tried that in a small town,” Collins said. “He challenged the Southern, racist establishment. But let Jason Aldean tell it … and this song has ‘nothing’ to do with race.”
Billboard has reached out to Aldean for comment.
Billboard broke the news on July 18 that CMT had pulled Aldean’s video for the song from their airwaves. In response to the criticism of his song, the country singer shared a comment across his social media accounts, claiming that the accusations of racist songwriting against him were wrong. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage,” he wrote. “While I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far.”
“Try That in a Small Town” was written by Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy and Kurt Michael Allison.
Check out Collins’ full TikTok below:
Miranda Lambert took a moment to address a fan in the crowd again Saturday night (July 22), but this time it was to give a compliment. The country star, performing at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino at Zappos Theater during her Miranda Lambert: Velvet Rodeo The Las Vegas Residency, spotted something that amused her in […]