#26: Try Love In A Small Town
the weekly recommendations
I can’t decide if I think that country music is in the news a bit more than it typically is OR if I’m just paying more attention to it and am compelled to notice it more.
Historically, country music has been a bit of a lampooned genre, given its tendency to focus on divorce, drinking, and dead dogs. And while this stereotyping is not unfair, there’s also a richer complexity within it that has been mostly obscured.
Just as with any kind of music, within country music, there are artists playing the commercial noise, artists redefining the genre, and artists attempting both.
It’s why, despite belonging to the same(ish) genre, two country musicians very much in the news right now, Jason Aldean and Tyler Childers, can seem so very different.
Last week, Jason Aldean dropped a music video for his single Try That In A Small Town.
Prior to the video, the song didn’t really generate that much buzz, but after the video dropped, a discourse kerfuffle launched given that images in the video seemed more designed to engage the culture war force multiplier effect than it did to support the ideas behind the song lyrics.
It wouldn’t be fair to give my opinion on Jason Aldean because I don’t listen to his music or know anything really about him. All I can assess is the song, the video, and his response which, when faced with criticism that his video came off as lynchy and that images used in his video have a complicated history, was to clarify…
The song, the video, and this quote require a pretty robust suspension of disbelief given the incongruities present, but the thing is, I think I believe him.
As a reminder, he was the musician performing as the Las Vegas Strip shooting occurred in 2017, where 60 people were killed and over 800 were injured. That doesn’t excuse the tone of his song and video but it may inform it a little more.
Was it incredibly naive to think you could release a video like Try That In a Small Town and not get blowback? YES.
Is there some culture war gamesmanship going on here where he may have wanted to chum the water to frenzy up an outrage response that would then give way to outrage about the outrage? PROBABLY.
You can’t sign off on a video showing protest footage, lynch sites, and the American flag and pair this with a song about taking matters into your own hands and not realizing the implication.
It would be like the Mario Brothers releasing a song called “Shells Were Made for Stomping”, releasing a video of them jumping on koopa troopas, and then being like, “We didn’t realize people would interpret this as a celebration of violence against koopa troopas. We wrote it in celebration of brotherhood.”
Sometimes, there are mistakes made in good faith, and sometimes, there are mistakes we make because we don’t think it will blow back on us.
I feel confident that this is the latter because nothing in a cursory skim through of Jason Aldean suggests that he’s original enough to be controversial. The arc of his artistic output seems to be about overtly appealing to a very specific demographic of listener.
So unless Jason Aldean is just a completely mendacious block of frozen hot dog water, I think that there is a kind of simplistic ideology undergirding the fat, soulless heart of Try That In A Small Town WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY ALSO being dog-whistley and replete with coded language.
This means that he’s either intentional with his ignorance or ignorant about his intent. Neither is great, but one is a little worse.
The curious thing, though is how his song and the scenarios it presents both in the lyrics and in the accompanying video, despite supposedly being about the “feeling of community” actually seem much more interested in the “villainous others” all throughout the margins of the song than it is about community.
Is the song REALLY about community or is community just the excuse being used to talk about what badasses we could all be? It’s the question masculinity has been asking for thousands of years since Agamemnon rallied the Greeks to fight Troy. Were the Greeks really fighting for the purpose of rescuing Helen of Troy (no) or were they just looking for a purpose for their fight? (yes)
It may seem like semantics but the order matters; It’s the difference between being an asshole and being someone who stands up to an asshole.
On the other end of the spectrum, is Tyler Childers’ newest song, In Your Love.
It dropped this weekend accompanied with a video and lyrics that takes those who have typically been the “villanous others” and instead wants to welcome them into a community of humanity.1
In other words, no divisiveness is required for the concept of the story and song as it’s all about love and for love, both in the romantic sense but also in the larger sense of love for our fellow human beings.
NOW, to play devil’s advocate, you could certainly argue that Tyler Childers is just playing the same culture war game at the other end of the ideological spectrum (delight the libs, enrage the homophobes).
Where I have almost no experience with Jason Aldean, I do have extensive experience with Tyler Childers (to the point of probable subjectivity TBH) so I can report that artistic choices like this are a pattern with him. He makes what he makes because it’s seemingly what he thinks and believes and isn’t concerned with whether or not he will be celebrated on social media for it, and I can only wonder, as a person who has overcome addiction, is he sensitive to the grace of consistent inclusivity and empathy because he has experienced time as someone needing acceptance and sympathy?
I don’t know, but I do know that it’s harder to perform an idea than it is to embody a lived experience. And while I’m not saying that I know for sure that Jason Aldean has never whipped some villain’s ass, I would be prepared to gamble a large sum of money on it.
And yet, at the same time, if I had performed during a mass shooting, I could probably understand wanting to whip some villain ass too.
But even more, my counter to charges of In Your Love being just a different kind of woke war chess move would be that at its essence, In Your Love is just a love song and the video interpretation of it centering on a same-sex couple isn’t about sending up a culture war flare as much as it’s about wanting to acknowledge that love is love is love.
And even more, I think there’s a theme of renewal and redemption throughout In Your Love when you consider the inclusion of a loaded phrase like “I will stand my ground.”
Of late, this has been a phrase used to justify why one neighbor or property owner can commit violence against the other in the name of personal autonomy, but the song seeks to redeem that language into the defense of something more sacred, love and connection and companionship even in the face of outdated moralities.
Again, we’re back to the idea of delineating what makes a fight worthy.
Evangelical Christianity has really complicated this notion given its intense focus on division as a means to retaining holiness and purity from the corrupted culture, but along the way, this fixation on separation and division has become fetishized to the point that it’s almost an industrial complex of conflict, division, and separation, when, one could confidently argue, the biblical Jesus would have been entirely more interested in connecting with people instead of dividing them.
In other words, if you’re asking me which song Jesus would have preferred more, A) that’s an impossible question because I have no idea about JC’s musical palate. I don’t know if he would be an EDM guy or maybe a hip hop guy? He could even be a covers-only musical fan given his connection to covering sin, so it’s really just an impossible question.
But B) if, in wondering about the preference of the guy who was essentially lynched by a small-town posse who took matters into their own hands, between, In Your Love or Try That In A Small Town, isn’t the answer kind of obvious?
🎉 The Weekly Recommendations 🎉
📚 The Rachel Incident
WHO: Caroline O’Donoghue
WHERE: Amazon / Audible
WHY: This is a lovely and wonderful book about friendship, love, feeling aimless and useless, and just trying to understand yourself before you can even begin to find yourself
-Knox
🍔 Quarterback
WHERE: Netflix
WHO: Omaha Productions (Peyton Manning) and NFL Films
WHY: I watched this with my son and we loved getting to see a little more of the day-to-day of three very different QBs. Seeing a potential all-timer like Patrick Mahomes is always pretty sweet, but seeing him in a year where he wins the Super Bowl was a casting coup.
But the sneaky star of the season is Kirk Cousins’ midwestern goodness.
While Quarterbacks doesn’t really attempt to critically consider any of the three QBs (yes Patrick Mahomes is good, but is he likable? Why DID Marcus Mariota leave in the middle of the season? Is there validity to the Kirk-Cousins-isn’t-ready-for-prime-time notion? etc etc) it’s mostly okay because the charm of the show isn’t in seeing a fully rendered picture of the QBs; it’s in seeing all the stuff we don’t normally get to see.
-Knox
📚 Marrying the Ketchups
WHO: Jennifer Close
WHERE: Amazon / Audible
WHY: This was recommended in our community by Annette Silveira in a recent newsletter and I picked it up because the premise of a messy family drama in Chicago with the backdrop of the Cubs winning the World Series is right in my wheelhouse.
If you love lots of characters and layers of stories on top of other stories, I think you’ll love this book. Conversely, if you’re easily overwhelmed with multiple perspectives, you might need to think twice as each chapter moves around the family to give different character perspectives and if you aren’t paying close attention, you can get a little lost.
Otherwise though, I loved the scope and enjoyed spending time with characters who aren’t always smart, wise, or making the noble decision.
-Knox
** YES, ANDs FROM THE READER COMMUNITY**
(Click each comment for the book link)
In the comments, let me know: what are YOU recommending this week?
It’s important to acknowledge that Tyler Childers has acknowledged handing off the writing of the music video to Silas House, the poet laureate of Kentucky. He obviously had input, but just like we can’t completely penalize Jason Aldean for every directorial choice for his video, we can’t completely adulate Tyler Childers for the content of his video. Is adulate even a word? Hope so!
Knox, your ability to see and put words to nuance is much needed in this 2023 world. Thank you and please keep going.
1a. Why are music videos still being made? It seems like a colossal waste of money and time but I know nothing of the music industry so probably there’s a financial reason.
1b. I listened to Jason Aldean’s song a couple weeks ago and liked it (I loved it but he has a season pass for me…probably a trash opinion but it is what it is) and I could not find the controversial element…and then I learned about the video.
1c. I listened to Tyler Childers song the other day and loved it and had no idea there was controversy around the video because I didn't know there was a video (see1a).
2. I am musically promiscuous so I like most songs. I think much like misbehaving children - bad attention is still attention - and somewhere along the line of people who have a hand in making anything “artistic” and hopefully profitable someone knows that and uses it to their advantage.