Jason Aldean links 'Try That In A Small Town' to Boston Marathon bombing at concert

Jason Aldean is digging his heels in as he defends his song, "Try That In A Small Town," which has been met with criticism for what some say is the country star promoting gun violence and lynching.

The 46-year-old connected his song to the Boston Marathon bombing while performing in Massachusetts on Sunday.

"I was lying in bed last night and thinking to myself, 'You guys would get this better than anybody, right?'" he said in clips circulating social media. The message of his song, he said, has been "overshadowed by all the (expletive)."

"I remember a time, I think it was April of 2013, when the Boston Marathon bombings happened," Aldean continued, referencing the 2013 attack that killed multiple people and injured hundreds of others. "You guys remember this, right? What I saw when that happened was, not a small town — a big … town — come together.

"The whole country, especially Boston, came together to find" the people responsible, he said. "Any of you guys that would've found those guys before the cops did, I know you guys from Boston, and you guys would've beat" them.

After uproar began earlier this month, Country Music Television stopped airing Aldean's music video for "Try That In A Small Town." The TV network pulled the video from rotation, a CMT spokesperson confirmed to USA TODAY in an email at the time.

Not long after the music video's release, critics highlighted the song lyrics as emblematic of problematic messaging supported by many in his rural, small-town fan base.

"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 / You cross that line, it won't take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don't / Try that in a small town,” Aldean sings.

Viewers also noted that scenes in the video were shot at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where a Black man named Henry Choate, 18, was lynched in 1927. The site is also where the infamous Columbia Race Riot occurred in 1946.

Aldean said during the show over the weekend that the song is "not about race. It’s about people getting their (stuff) together, acting right. You're hearing from the person that made the record. Everybody is trying to tell you what I meant. They don't know what I meant."

Aldean added that he knows "you guys are like me."

"You want to be able to send your kids to school and not have to worry about something happening while they’re at school," he said. "To me, that's not a racial issue. I don't (care) what color you are. If you're acting out, burning down buildings, costing taxpayers all this money, just for you to go and show that you’re pissed off, to me I just don’t get that. We’re just never going to see eye to eye about that."

Aldean took to Twitter to reject the wave of criticism, sharing a lengthy statement on what the song means to him. "While I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music − this one goes too far," he wrote.

The song has seen an uptick in streams as criticism continues. It occupied the No. 2 slot on Billboard's Hot 100 chart and the was the top song on the Hot Country Songs chart as of July 29, according to Billboard.

And while Aldean is publicly rejecting any issue taken with his song, changes have seemingly been made to the video.

Amid controversy:Six seconds removed from Jason Aldean's 'Try That in a Small Town' video

Last week, The Washington Post has reported that the clip, with Black Lives Matter protest footage removed, is now six seconds shorter.

A news clip from Atlanta's Fox 5 showing the city's violent 2020 and 2021 Black Lives Matter protest confrontations is no longer visible in the video. Moreover, adds Aldean's representatives, a spoken-word clip of a wheelchair-bound elderly man appealing to rural values and another man in a baseball cap and sunglasses staring into the sun are not present in the video's re-uploaded version.

Contributing: Marcus K. Dowling