Jason Aldean fans are opening up about what the song “Try That In A Small Town” really means to them.
Last summer, Aldean gained national attention over the music video for one of his singles.
The visual faced both backlash and praise for openly alluding to different forms of vigilante justice.
Country Music Television even stopped showing the video on their network  after critics said it contained lyrics that glorified gun violence and conveyed racist ideas.
At the time, a CMT spokesperson confirmed to NPR that they pulled the video, but offered no comment on their reasoning.
The country singer released the song in May, but it wasn’t until the release of the video two months later that the discourse heated up.
In a statement released alongside the video, Aldean said the song represents an “unspoken rule” for those raised in small towns:
 “We all have each other’s backs and we look out for each other.”
Jason, himself, is not credited as a writer for the song, which has been the case for most of his 27 hit singles.
As pointed out by NPR, “threats to outsiders (and the implication those outsiders are from cities) are present throughout the song’s lyrics, which begin with a list of crimes that might happen in urban settings.”
“Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk / carjack an old lady at a red light,” he sings, implying that’s what happens in big cities.
“Well, try that in a small town / See how far you make it down the road / Around here we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won’t take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don’t,” the chorus says.
Between shots of Aldean singing in the video are clips of vandalizing, riots, and police encounters, much of which looks very similar to racial injustice protests.
A lot of the criticism around the video has less to do with those clips and more to do with one setting from the video: The Maury County Courthouse building in Columbia, Tennessee.
This landmark was the site of race riots in 1946 as well as a 1927 lynching.
Following all of the backlash, Aldean pushed back hard against accusations he was “pro-lynching,” saying such an interpretation “goes too far” and is “dangerous.”
“There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it,” he wrote on Twitter.
He continued: “‘Try That In A Small Town,’ for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief.”
“NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart,” Aldean concluded.
Now, months later, a reporter from the New York Times is getting some more insight into why fans of the song are so adamant about it.
“And so as we were thinking about how to understand the G.O.P. presidential primary, we saw that Jason Aldean would be performing at the Iowa state fair. And we knew we had to go,” the NY Times’ Astead W. Herndon said of his mission.
Still, Herndon said it was difficult to find people who were willing to talk to him about the song, thinking it could be because of the optics.
“This felt like people saw me coming and thought, oh, that Black guy, with his fair media badge around his neck, is going to make me feel like a racist for liking this song,” he said.
In the end, Astead was able to find fair-goers who were willing to talk, explaining what the song means to them.
“Most of what — he’s just a good old boy that’s trying to make a living, trying to make sure everybody knows what — where we come from,” one fan said of Aldean’s mission.
“I love Aldean. He’s just a patriot. He loves America. And he’s just true country. Just loves his country, loves his family,” another fan said. “And he stands for that. He stands for family, God, and country.”
Another fan echoed that same sentiment, insisting that all Aldean is trying to talk about is how much he loves God, family, and community.
“Yeah, it’s speaking to the values of we stick together. We’re a community. And we stand for good morals,” the fan said. “And I want my kids to see that.”
In response to the massive wave of criticism against the music video, The Washington Post reported that a version featuring Black Lives Matter protest footage was removed less than two weeks after its release.
When asked about the removal of the clips, Aldean’s label, Broken Bow Records, added that “third party copyright clearance issues” are to blame for the removal of the footage, not online criticism.