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\n\tSome characters in Jason Aldean<\/a> songs used to hate their small towns. In 2010\u2019s \u201cChurch Pew or Bar Stool,\u201d the narrator \u2014 alienated by both Saturday-night drunks and Sunday-morning Bible clutchers \u2014 feels alone in his one-stoplight hometown. The protagonist in 2017\u2019s \u201cAny Ol\u2019 Barstool\u201d found the part of town that suits him, but he\u2019s resigned to a life of slugging Jack and Cokes. The character in 2012\u2019s \u201cWater Tower\u201d is grateful to return to his hometown, but needed to leave in order to view it with fresh perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2023, Aldean rode the culture war to the top of the all-genre charts with \u201cTry That in a Small Town.\u201d The song \u2014 a fairly generic \u201cresentful of the big bad city\u201d anthem with a violent, dog-whistle-laden video <\/a>\u2014 pushed all the buttons it intended to, becoming the biggest mainstream hit of his career, even if it was somewhat unremarkable within his loyal country audience (unlike nearly 30 some odd songs in Aldean\u2019s career, \u201cTry That\u201d never reached Number One at country radio).<\/p>\n \n\tWhat happens after going from reliable hitmaker to cultural flashpoint? It\u2019s hard not to consider Aldean\u2019s latest album, Songs About Us<\/em>, at least partially through the prism of that question, especially given that the co-writers of \u201cTry That in a Small Town\u201d are all over this record. But the singer has returned with a resolute refutation of the idea that his music will be a platform for his conservative worldview or grievance politics. The record contains mostly standard-fare country imagery (like the blue eyes in \u201cSongs About Us,\u201d a song, and album title, that begs the question: Who is us?<\/em>). Indeed, there\u2019s nothing explicitly political about Aldean\u2019s latest: The closest the Georgia native gets to blue-state resentment are the high heels and black dress meant to represent the love interest in the city-girl-meets-country-boy album closer \u201cLovin\u2019 Me Too Long.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhat\u2019s happened instead, post-\u201cTry That,\u201d is that Aldean has dug his boots in so hard into singing about rural pride and small-town virtue that it can feel like he\u2019s about to slip. Twenty-plus years into his career, Aldean has backed himself into a corner, a hamster-wheel trap where being \u201cJason Aldean\u201d means perpetually churning out lines about all the mud and dirt and dust, where every sunset in every little town burns red (as they do in four separate songs here), where men on the eve of their fifties sing about seeing girls \u201chotter than the South gets\u201d (\u201cCountry Into Rock n\u2019 Roll\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n