This didn’t go over well.
Last night, ABC aired a CMA Fest concert special, which featured previously recorded performances from June 10th at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium by some of the biggest artists in mainstream country, including Eric Church, Lainey Wilson, Tim McGraw, Miranda Lambert and plenty more.
And Jason Aldean also took the stage to sing his new single, “Try That In A Small Town,” which has become the hottest topic in America right now.
In case you somehow missed the controversy, the song was released back in May, but the release of the music video has prompted a massive backlash that even resulted in CMT removing it from the their rotation.
Many online have accused the outspoken country singer of featuring racist lyrics and imagery in both the song and video, while others called the song a “pro-gun anthem” coming from the headliner of the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Of course, Aldean was on stage when the massacre broke out in Las Vegas in 2017.
Jason even released his own statement defending the song, and earlier today, former United States President Donald Trump weighed in, saying on his social media platform Truth Social that he “support(s) Jason all the way.”
And now, it’s also set off a firestorm on Twitter with many very unhappy that ABC still aired Jason’s performance last night:
And of course, there were plenty people defending him, sharing their support for the fact that his performance was still included in the special:
ABC and CMA Fest did not share anything of the performance on their social media like they did for other artists, and did not share the performance video to YouTube along with everyone else’s.
“Try That In A Small Town” also reached #1 on the U.S. iTunes all-genre chart a couple days ago, and you can watch the video below.
