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A Year After ‘Small Town’ Ban, Jason Aldean Performs at 2024 CMT Music Awards

Jason Aldean Performs at 2024 CMT Awards despite ban over "Try That In a Small Town."

Not quite a year ago, CMT pulled Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town” music video from its airwaves, prompted by criticism from people who said the video demonized Black Lives Matter, if not Black people in general, with some going as far as to call it a “modern day lynching song.” Certainly a pro-gun, anti-protest song that places small-town America as a morally superior place to big cities, “Small Town” wasn’t a runaway hit for Aldean until the controversy turned it into a political lightning rod. The ensuing debate ended up propelling the song to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, with Aldean’s defenders supporting it in defiance of critics. During the 2017 Route 91 music festival in Las Vegas, a gunman opened fire on the crowd during Aldean’s closing set, killing 60 people.

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