Several seconds of Black Lives Matters protests in Atlanta from 2020 and 2021 were removed from Jason Aldean’s controversial “Try That in a Small Town” video, according to The Washington Post.
A few days after its official release, the creators of the video removed clips taken from Atlanta’s Fox 5 (WAGA-TV) news coverage of violent confrontations between protesters and police in Atlanta. As a result, the music video is now about six seconds shorter at three minutes and two seconds.
The country star’s record label BBR Music Group told the newspaper it was over “third party copyright clearance issues,” not because of any backlash regarding the video’s content itself. Fox 5 did not respond to a query regarding whether it requested the video be removed.
Many of the protest video clips used in the video were stock footage and available for purchase. Rolling Stone noted multiple clips came not from the United States but Canada including protests in Toronto and Montreal.
Aldean, who was raised in Macon, has defended the song and the video against critics who see it as a rural vigilante-style fantasy against urban city types. The song notes several crimes that often happen in cities, then declares: “Try that in a small town/ See how far ya make it down the road/ Around here, we take care of our own.”
All the brouhaha has lifted the song’s popularity. It debuted at No. 2 last week on the Billboard Hot 100 behind “Seven” by Jung Kook with Atlanta’s Latto.
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