Concert review: Jason Aldean goes off on his critics — and the crowd in Charlotte goes wild

If you hate Jason Aldean because of what he stands for — especially in the wake of the controversy involving the incendiary message and music video behind his latest single, “Try That in a Small Town” — there’s nothing anyone can say that is going to make you love him.

Conversely, if you love Jason Aldean because of what he stands for — the Second Amendment, patriotism, zero tolerance for thuggish behavior in both large cities and small towns, and red-blooded American-made country music — fat chance anyone would be able to dissuade you from enjoying that song or that video.

So, if we’re in agreement that those two statements are facts, then let me present you with this one to consider:

On Thursday night at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, the country-music star who has spent much of his summer juggling a boom in both fame and notoriety spent 95 minutes during which 20,000 of his fans hung on his every word.

And by his own admission, the 46-year-old Aldean uttered more between songs at this one than he usually does during his live shows.

Not at the outset, however. At first, after walking on stage to start his set wearing tight blue jeans and a dark-gray T-shirt touting an art exhibition dedicated to rock band Oasis’ mid-’90s heyday, he just put his low-brimmed-cowboy-hat-wearing head down and sang.

He opened with recent promo single “Tough Crowd,” its “Make the Red, White, and Blue proud” refrain offering as good an excuse as any to beam a giant American flag onto the video screen behind him. Two songs later, Aldean let slip his first bit of banter, a brief shout-out to tequila drinkers before “That’s What Tequila Does.”

But it wasn’t until he finished his performance of that modest 2022 hit that he began to loosen up his lips between songs.

“You know that I’m not a guy that stands up here and does a whole lot of talking throughout the night,” Aldean told the crowd. “I know you guys came to hear some music. I’m gonna play you as much music as we can. ...

“However, I do got some s--- I need to say in a little bit, so we’ll get to that a little later in the night.”

The crowd, now properly primed, roared in anticipation.

Four songs later — more than half an hour into his “Highway Desperado Tour” show in his “adopted hometown” (so dubbed by him because his wife Brittany grew up here and her family still lives in south Charlotte) — he finally took five to address the elephant in the amphitheater.

Before I get to that, though, I need to reiterate the point I led with: No one’s mind is going to be changed about Jason Aldean because of anything I say on the topic.

Since the “Try That in a Small Town” music video was uploaded to YouTube last month, critics have offered scores of opinions that lay out clear arguments accusing Aldean of using racially coded language against Black people. Meanwhile, a variety of conservative voices and other assorted supporters of Aldean’s have offered a parade of passionate defenses, countering that the insinuation that the song or video has anything to do with race is absurd while simultaneously embracing the singer’s “don’t-mess-with-us” message.

I’m not going to do any sort of deep dive on the two opposing sides.

If you somehow have avoided becoming aware of this whole flap yet, then you need to do that on your own and draw your own conclusions. (That’s something Aldean and I can agree on. “Whatever you guys are reading in the news, just make sure you do your homework, alright?” is how he waded into the controversy on Thursday.)

Beyond that...

I’m just going to present the full transcript of his diatribe, and note where fans at PNC reacted approvingly, and leave the rest up to you.

• “Listen, there’s no doubt that the media tries to twist a lot of things to make it look this way or that way.” *Loud cheering here.*

• “Meanwhile, we’re the bad guys for, you know, wanting, like, prayer in school and, like, you know, we’re the bad guys for that. So this s--- doesn’t make any — it makes no sense to me. Just like a lot of you guys, it probably doesn’t make any sense to you either.” *Loud cheering here.*

• “We put out a song that was supposed to be — it was supposed to start a conversation about people looking at — at what’s going on in our country, and hopefully realize that the — what’s going on in our country is a complete s--- show, right?” *Loud cheering here.*

• “But once the media gets a hold of it, they start — you know, they start flipping the narrative on it, and you’re this, you’re that, all that kinda s---. Well, the problem with me is, I’m a Georgia boy and I don’t get pushed around very easily, alright?” *Loud cheering here.*

• “So people can say whatever they want to say about me. I truly don’t care. Right? So —” *Loud cheering here.*

• “I feel like, to me, my message was pretty clear, and by the looks of what’s going tonight and what happened with the song and the video once it came out, I feel like a lot of people are on my side. What do you say?” *Loud cheering here.*

• “What I will say, man — what I will say to everybody here is, we live in a world now where if somebody doesn’t agree with you they will try to beat you down until you just submit to whatever it is they think, right?” *Loud cheering here.*

• “But I ain’t the one for that s---, alright? I’m not.” *Loud cheering here.*

• “So I just — I do wanna say thank you guys, to everybody — when this song and video came out — thank you for kinda seeing through what was going on, seeing what the message we were sending really was. And thank you guys so much for making this song what it’s been so far. This thing has been one hell of a ride, and I don’t think it’s stopping anytime soon.” *Loud cheering here.*

That’s a LOT of wind-up for a three-minute song. But it worked. Once it got going, his fans were practically frothing as they sang along to the now-well-known lyrics — “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and light it up / Yeah, ya think you’re tough / Well, try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own...”

Aldean threw up a military-ish salute as the song ended, and amid yet more loud cheering, a segment of the crowd started chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

After that, politics were forgotten, making room for some more-traditional crowd-pleasing.

He joined a giant video apparition of Carrie Underwood for a bracing duet of their ballad “If I Didn’t Love You” while he sat and played piano on a distressed lime-green grand. While introducing “Hicktown,” he toasted his fans with a shot of his Wolf Moon Bourbon and used the burst of fire in his belly to take a flying leap off a stage riser to jump-start the country-rock song. During “My Kinda Party,” he grinned as he placed a guitar pick in the hand of a little girl perched on a parent’s shoulders, then plucked another off his mic stand so he could whale away on his instrument, barely breaking character to coolly gesture for security to break up a fight in the pit. (It obliged.)

And after show-closer “She’s Country,” Aldean finished his show like he always does: By cracking a can of beer, letting half of it spill onto the stage, chugging maybe a quarter of it, then haphazardly tossing it to the floor.

Hold on a sec, though. Sorry. Did I say politics were forgotten? I should have said they were forgotten for the most part. There was one other allusion earlier on, at roughly the concert’s midway point...

While Aldean was ripping through one of the rapping portions of 2011’s “Dirt Road Anthem” — which up until “Try That in a Small Town” hit No. 1 this month was the highest-charting song of his career — a fan tossed a flag at his feet. Most people close enough to the stage could tell that it was a Trump flag before it even had been unfolded.

It was revealed, more specifically, to be a “Trump 2024 | Make America Great Again” flag.

Aldean briefly showed it off, then carefully re-folded it and gently set it down out of the way. But whereas he’d had all manner of charged-up things to say about his song and his video several minutes prior, he didn’t say a single word about the Trump flag.

Because at that point, he didn’t need to.

Jason Aldean’s setlist

1. “Tough Crowd”

2. “Tattoos on This Town”

3. “When She Says Baby”

4. “That’s What Tequila Does”

5. “Fly Over States”

6. “Rearview Town”

7. “Amarillo Sky”

8. “We Back”

9. “Try That in a Small Town”

10. “Take a Little Ride”

11. “Dirt Road Anthem”

12. “Got What I Got”

13. “Crazy Town”

14. “Trouble With a Heartbreak”

15. “You Make It Easy”

16. “Big Green Tractor”

17. “Lights Come On”

18. “Girl Like You”

19. “If I Didn’t Love You”

20. “Hicktown”

21. “My Kinda Party”

22. “She’s Country”