Maren Morris Clashes With Jason Aldean Over 'Try That In A Small Town'

Maren Morris is seemingly about to kickstart another round of controversy surrounding Jason Aldean’s hit single, Try That In A Small Town.

Teasing what looks like a new music video, Morris posted a photo of herself alongside a partial small-scale, possibly Claymation or animated set featuring a billboard that reads, “Welcome to Our Perfect Small Town From Sunrise to Sundown.”

The Humble Quest singer captioned the Instagram post over the weekend, “I’m done filling a cup with a hole in the bottom.”

While Morris’ post is small-scale, cutesy and colourful, Aldean’s Try That In A Small Town music video finds Aldean standing before a church with an American flag draped over the entrance.

From there, the video weaves real-life footage of flag burning, protests, and a robbery at a convenience store. Aldean has denied “pro-lynching” allegations as the footage was reportedly filmed at a Columbia, Tennessee courthouse at the site of a 1933 lynching.

On Facebook, Aldean wrote that Try That In A Small Town “Refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors [sic], regardless of differences of background or belief. Because they were our neighbors [sic], and that was above any differences.”

Rolling Stone reports that this isn’t the first time Morris and Aldean have clashed. Morris called Aldean’s wife, Brittany, “Insurrection Barbie” after she made alleged transphobic comments on social media last year.

She also appeared as a guest judge on a January 2023 episode of RuPaul's Drag Race and addressed homophobia in country music with its queen competitors.

“When I was a guest judge on Drag Race, I did feel like I just wanted to speak from my heart and apologise [for country music’s treatment of the LGBTQ community] as an artist that comes from the genre,” she said in a Billboard interview. “I felt like country music, in some ways, gets overlooked in that community because they rightfully assume it’s not a welcoming community.

“No “sorry” is going to undo the decades of harm that the country music industry has done to LGBTQ people in terms of representation. I was trying to say that there’s a lot of good people in this genre, and I hope that you don’t write it off forever because of what some artists said on their stage.”

Replying to Morris’ Instagram post, Brandi Carlile, Morris’ collaborator in the supergroup The Highwomen, wrote, “Oh it is ON” with a fire emoji.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙼𝙰𝚁𝙴𝙽 𝙼𝙾𝚁𝚁𝙸𝚂 (@marenmorris)