Review Summary: *Sighs in exasperation*
Jason Aldean has always represented the absolute
worst of what modern mainstream country music has come to stand for in the 21st century. Once upon a time, the genre produced pleasant, intelligent and enjoyable music from a variety of talented artists and had a sufficient level of diversity of thought and sound. Today, country's top dogs are reactionary, insular, defensive, hostile, and allow themselves to be defined
exclusively by the same tired laundry list of empty cultural signifiers. Drinking beer, driving a truck, and expressing love for God and country is not unique to country music, or to the people that perform and consume it; but you'd never know that from the way these beer-bellied coconut heads cling to these tropes the way Sowing and I cling to our Yellowcard records. The current bumper crop of talk-sing-rapping douchebags who bray vacantly into the void that is country's mainstream arena are emotionally tethered to a lifestyle they insist is all their own. And to
hell with anyone who disagrees with it or tries to slip on down to what used to be the Oasis.
Jason Aldean was one of the biggest offenders in this regard
loooooong before he dropped the most controversial song of the entire year.
"Try That In A Small Town" is the perfectly ugly culmination of everything we saw happen to country music after 9/11; the fake tough guys penning Bush position papers disguised as patriotic anthems, the Toby Keith x Dixie Chicks feud that led to women being ruthlessly displaced from the format, the purposeful dumbing down of an audience that neither Aldean, nor his contemporaries, have any respect for.
All of that was leading up to this. Opposition to "woke" ideology, political incorrectness and really anything that can be twisted into a pretzel to look "unpatriotic" always had a home in conservative spaces. But few mainstream musical acts dared to align so outwardly with this swath of the population before Aldean shot a music video in front of a Tennessee courthouse where a black teenager was hanged for a crime he possibly didn't commit a century ago. Armed to the teeth with stock footage filmed
outside the United States, Aldean planted his flag firmly in the camp of implying backlash and retaliation towards anyone who dares to "cuss out a cop" or engage in a violent protest. You don't have to endorse the behavior he's decrying to understand the harmful and dangerous implications of a song like this. To call it artless and unintelligent isn't saying enough. It's one of the cheapest political statements in the history of modern popular music, offered up by someone who not only grew up in a metropolitan area, but survived the deadliest mass shooting in American history. And he's
still pandering to people who are convinced that the government is going to take their guns away. I support the 2nd amendment, but I don't support tasteless political posturing, like what is seen in this insufferably ubiquitous excuse for "music."
The remaining forty-three and a half minutes that make up
Highway Desperado, the seventh album in nine years from country's most painfully prolific star, play like a standard Jason Aldean album. Aldean did contribute to writing on three tracks, the first time he's done so in
fourteen years. That's not to say he adds anything of value, like on "Hungover in a Hotel," which is marked by lifeless vocals, predictable production and a half-baked hook that sounds rushed to completion. On "Let Your Boys Be Country", Aldean spills back into the same familiar motifs that are supposed to qualify as innately "country"; "red dirt on boots", "trucks making backroad noise", you name it. What bewilders me the most about this track is Aldean's nudging of the listener (in this case, mothers) to encourage their sons to "let everything inside these county lines be his whole world," once again exposing country's breathtaking fear of the world beyond the very same "Church Pew or Bar Stool" town Aldean admitted he needed to get away from on 2010's
My Kinda Party and flipped off in farewell on 2018's
Rearview Town. Aldean lets it slip sometimes that he knows these "small towns" he glorifies are dead-ends, but he also knows his audience is too God damn stupid to know or care.
Elsewhere, Aldean still can't be chuffed to pretend he actually means it when he vows for the millionth time that he's getting over her on "From This Beer On" and "Breakup Breakdown", the latter of which oscillates into arena rock tendencies half-borrowed from the vastly superior likes of Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban. On "Changing Bars" and "Whiskey Drink", he's
still trying to drown the thought of her. I gave him a pass when last year's "That's What Tequila Does" came at this dead horse theme with a shred of sense, but come the f*ck on, man. How many God damn times do you have to sing about not being able to drink a girl's memory away? If you came here trying to accomplish the same thing, this album will give you your money's worth, replete with Aldean's perpetually insipid vocals, flavorless arena rock undertones, and tired production gloss that should have been abandoned a decade ago.
Highway Desperado f*cking blows. It's the same album Aldean has done several times before, only more sour when factoring in its Hot 100-topping-lead single. If Aldean had just continued to be one of bro country's loudest progenitors, it might have been innocuous enough to warrant little beyond a few laughs. His voice isn't terrible, either. On 2012's "Wheels Rollin'", he lets it rip and that song is better because of it. Aldean is a capable performer. But now his persona as an artist is just unnerving. He might not be hateful or violent like a Grand Wizard of the Klan, but he's outed himself explicitly as everything he already exhibited himself to be; emotionally and intellectually incurious. In a world that made sense, this maybe would be enough to usurp him from the level of prestige he's long occupied. But that's asking for too much. Country chose Toby over the Chicks; we shouldn't be surprised that the same audience Aldean had a hand in trivializing only embraced him more emphatically.
Country music stopped being the genre of "Friends in Low Places" and became the genre of "Hicktown." I'm heartbroken to recognize that it will never revert back to its old ways. It's one of the great musical tragedies of my lifetime.
Maybe there's still hope. But I won't hold my breath.
