The controversy surrounding Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” song has reached dangerous levels.
TikToker Destinee Stark told NBC News she had received racist and violent hate mail from Aldean fans since condemning the song. Stark made a video speaking out against the seemingly racist tone of the video’s content, featuring a Tennessee courthouse where a Black teenager was lynched in 1927. She decided to share her disdain to educate people on where Aldean went wrong and, shortly after, received serious backlash. “I get online all the time and I share my, like, opinions online all the time. It’s, you know, something that I do,” Stark said.
@destineenstark I may be petty, but my THOROUGH and petty! 😂 Here is my dissertation debunking Jason Aldean’s claims about his 🎶🎥 propaganda. #jasonaldean #countrymusic #debunked #debunktok #factsoverfeelings #propganda #americanpropaganda ♬ original sound – Destinee Stark
“And that first video that I made, I posted it at like … 11:30 p.m. … I didn’t think it would go anywhere. And I woke up to like thousands of messages about it.”
The content creator with 127,000 followers says she received hate messages after calling Aldean out. Some messages included racist slurs, fatphobic remarks, and death threats—including someone threatening to hang her in their backyard—something she described as the “worst” of them all. She tagged the country music star in the video, hoping he would rebuke the racist comments. “They’re trying to defend and say that the song isn’t racist while using racist rhetoric to tear me down, which literally defeats the purpose of their entire argument,” Stark said.
According to Newsweek, Stark admits to once being a fan of Aldean but with her life being threatened, things have changed. “I’m not surprised that people are angry with my commentary about this song and music video,” she wrote on Instagram. “I expected it, but I did not expect to have my literal life and the lives of my family threatened for pointing out subtle manifestations of racism. This is NOT okay. EVER.”
Aldean has not made any statements condemning his fans for making racist remarks, but did make a statement on July 18 saying that “not a single lyric on the song that references race.”