Over at Medium, I put up a piece pointing out how unfair it is to dump Oliver Anthony’s hit “Rich Men North of Richmond” in the same bucket as Jason Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town.” For brevity’s sake, I didn’t get into just how much disdain I have for the latter. Setting aside the uncomfortably violent imagery in the video, “Try That In a Small Town” is a really bad song.
The lyrics read like the author drew inspiration from a 30-second loop of Fox News Channel b-roll during a two-minute report on street violence in New York City. There is very little rhyme and even less structure; it’s something of an accomplishment that Aldean manages to make these words into something resembling a song. All of his grievances get summed up in the first few lines, and even then it isn’t clear the narrator knows what he’s complaining about.
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
“Try That in a Small Town”
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like
Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you’re tough…
That’s the first verse, where Aldean sounds blissfully unaware that more crime happens in places where there are more people. You can’t “sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk” if your town has no sidewalks. And do many Black Lives Matter protests get out of hand in Mayberry?
Sadly, this is the most coherent part of “Try That In a Small Town.” The remainder of the song includes a three-line second verse warning that Aldean’s inherited gun is off limits and a bridge that promises a band of “good old boys” will defend the idealized small-town way of life. Around those, an amorphous chorus is just lead and backup vocals repeating the track’s title as a warning. It’s a song about law and order with no structure. You could chuck a handful of magnetic poetry at a refrigerator and come up with something more coherent.
On top of all that, the video looks more processed than Velveeta. Jump cuts! Lens flares! Smoke machines! Plates smashed on a checkered floor! Aldean and his leather-clad band strum out the chords and riffs over shots of protests, urban violence, anarchy, and… a 1970s backyard touch football game at the 2:20 mark?
It isn’t clear how this fits, but it is clear that Mustache Dad is about to take that handoff to the house. (Little Timmy in the white shirt and what looks like striped pants looks like he’s out of position. I’m not sure how they do things in the city, but you can’t face the fence and make a tackle in a small town.)
The whole thing – the video and the song – is nonsensical. It comes off like a seven-fingered first draft of an AI-generated angry country song. Heck, it makes Luke Bryan’s music sound emotionally deep and thoughtful by comparison.
For the record, I wasn’t blown away by “Rich Men North of Richmond,” either. The wordplay in the line, “I wish politicians would look out for miners / Instead of minors on an island somewhere” was a bit too much. And then there was Anthony’s riff on “the obese milking welfare”: “If you’re 5-foot-3 and 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.” It’s a fair point, but there must be a story in there, right? (I wonder if some person in Anthony’s hometown, wider than he is short, heard that line and said, “Wait a minute…”)
Yet for all of its flaws, “Rich Men North of Richmond” is three things “Try That In a Small Town” isn’t: Catchy, authentic, and – most of all – coherent.
Jim Eltringham 