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Try That in a Small Town: A Review From an Actual Small Town Native
I grew up in a small town that had 18,000 people by the time I moved away as an adult in 2005.
Small towns have always been exploited by the cynical elite, desperate to paint some sort of small town ideals on us, which many times they get laughably wrong.
But that’s the nature of the so-called “culture wars” as politicians and their wealthy backers endlessly try to divide the rest of us, and turn us against each other, so we’re less likely to turn on them.
Elite professional songwriters, employed or contracted by wealthy record label executives are no different, especially in the country music world.
And like the songwriters and handlers for pop-country stars Toby Keith and Alan Jackson before him, it seems pop-country singer Jason Aldean is being cynically dragged into the right-wing culture wars as a way to maintain his fading relevance and boost record sales.
We say dragged, because of course, Aldean doesn’t do anything on his own, including songwriting. He can play guitar, but he is a mere puppet on stage, a puppet behind the recording mic. His songs and his image are run-of-the-mill, focus-group tested, follow-the-formula and don’t-stray-from-the-generic anthems…
