How Do I Reconcile My Distaste For Jason Aldean as a Person?
I like a lot of his music but don’t want to but I won’t stop listening to him
My love for his music started when I was still working at a country bar in Sacramento. We were a bit of a dive bar but the owner was well-connected and was able to get national country acts all the time in for concerts. I even got to sing a Lee Brice song for Lee Brice at the bar when he came in for a drink. I felt like I was part of the whole network being the karaoke DJ and getting a chance to rub elbows with some famous people.
The owner had tried to get Jason Aldean in there but he never came. It’s okay. I always played and sang his music at my shows anyway. I would belt “Amarillo Sky,” “Hicktown,” and “She’s Country.” Other songs I would sing were that famous duet he did with Kelly Clarkson, “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” and show off my rap skills with “Dirt Road Anthem.” I’m not huge into the country rap genre these days but that song just spoke to me. Thinking about the times when I was younger just driving down dirt roads with my family.
I loved and idolized what I thought Jason Aldean stood for, working people and just having fun. Basically what I thought all of his music was about. That was until he released the song, “Try That In A Small Town.” That was the first time I reexamined my love of his art. Anything beyond that, I’ve started to ignore. That song upset me with its implicit racism and seemingly apathetic attitude toward equality and basic civil rights.
Then I started seeing things about him being a conservative and Trump supporter. I started watching his appearances on Fox News. I was distraught. A person whose politics I knew nothing of previously had put that out there and made it a huge part of his personality. Even though it should’ve soured me completely on him, it was more complicated than that.
I had memories attached to the old songs and the musicality of those songs couldn’t be denied. I still found him to be a very talented musician and singer but I no longer felt the same way about him as a person after all of that. I’m a staunch leftist and a person who is very mindful of things like the environment, equality, and standing up for the rights of minorities, as I am one myself.
Maybe I should’ve seen this coming. He is a privileged, white country boy. His fan base is largely conservative since he is in the country genre. The thing is, I know of many artists in country music who do not think like him and are very progressive or at least open-minded or just don’t loudly express the kind of hateful rhetoric he’s put out there.
I like those artists more these days but I can’t help but think how much more his music would be appreciated by a wider audience if he was just a better person. In country music, he has plenty of contemporary examples: The Chicks, Dolly Parton, Kacey Musgraves, and I could go on. He decided to pander to his perceived fan base and that makes him largely unpopular outside of those circles. It seems that he stands for everything that people expect in a stereotypical male white country artist.
Again, despite all of this and being almost diametrically opposite to him in every way, I still find myself jamming out to his songs. Today, Mike played a song he did with Ludacris called “Burning Bridges” and I remember how cool we all used to think he was, especially before we knew he liked a pretty unpopular political figure.
This thought reminds me that there are still some problematic artists that I enjoy despite what they’ve done or how they’re perceived and I wonder if that’s something I should reconsider or if my knowing what I know is enough and that I can still enjoy the art without enjoying the person behind the art.
My friend today told me that I shouldn’t enjoy it because of that. I disagreed with her and countered with R. Kelly and Michael Jackson. I don’t listen to R. Kelly anymore and I said that the situations weren’t even close to comparable.
This is just all about politics, even if those politics support things about limiting women’s body autonomy, and targeting minority groups I belong to through Project 2025. Maybe if he gets even more hateful in his rhetoric and art in the future, I can just unplug and finally cease my listening enjoyment. But for now, I’ll listen to his older songs and enjoy my previously ignorant view of who he is. What do you think?
