Podcast giant Joe Rogan defended singer Jason Aldean amid backlash he received for his song “Try That In A Small Town.”
On July 26, Rogan, 55, sat down with guest Canadian professor Gad Saad and shared his thoughts on the controversy surrounding Aldean’s song during an episode on his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.“
“I’m not saying that’s the greatest song the world has ever known, but the level of outrage coming from people that are upset about that song is so strange when there are hundreds of rap songs out there that are infinitely worse,” he said, admitting he still finds them “enjoyable.”
Saad added that a lot of rap songs are “misogynistic” and glorify violence.
Rogan agreed with Saad’s assessment and claimed no one complains about that kind of music.
“The racial aspect of it was crazy, because the real Antifa problems that were happening during the BLM, I think there was a lot of white people doing that wasn’t it? It was a lot of lost liberal Whites who are very angry, who decided to take up this movement and smash things,” he said of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, adding “there’s nothing racial” about the song’s lyrics.
In a viral tweet posted by Aldean, 46, to Twitter on July 18, he fired back at critics who accused his song, released in May, of being “pro lynching.”
“These references are not only meritless but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it- and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage -and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music- this one goes too far,” he wrote.
Despite the backlash, Rep. Lauren Boebart (R-Colo.) shared on Twitter Aldean’s song reached number one on the iTunes charts.
“Whenever they try and censor us, we only go stronger,” she wrote.