Why Jason Aldean Is Proud to Live in ‘the Best Country in the World’
By Movieguide® Contributor
To country singer Jason Aldean, there isn’t any country better than America, even with its faults.
“I think being American to me just means freedom,” Aldean told Fox News. “We live in the best country in the world.”
“I mean, there’s a reason that everybody else wants to be here and wants to come here,” he said. “It’s because they don’t have what we have. And so, I’m still very proud of that and proud of our country, even though sometimes it gets a little sideways and a little hard to recognize sometimes.”
To Aldean, America is still the America of many years ago, where anyone can be anything they want to be if they work hard.
“But I think we live in the best country in the world,” he added. “I mean, we get the chance to go and still have the American dream. You can come from nothing and build something and make something out of your life, out of yourself and change your life, your family’s life.”
“And I think we still have the ability to do that in this country, which is pretty cool,” he said.
At the Academy of Country Music Awards, Aldean gave a tribute to his friend, the late Toby Keith, and sang Keith’s song “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.”
The best advice Keith ever gave Aldean was to “never apologize for being patriotic.”
“Just being not afraid to speak your mind, stand up for what you believe in,” Aldean said. “Whether other people agree with it or not, be who you are and be unapologetic about it. And I think that’s pretty good advice.”
Movieguide® recently reported that Aldean wants to put prayer back in schools:
Country star Jason Aldean said in response to being asked if he believes if this generation “needs Jesus:” “It’s like taking prayer out of school and all that, that was kind of the beginning of the snowball you know? It’s like, ‘Oh we got that. Now let’s go for something [else]’ …you know, and it just at some point it just becomes a snowball effect.”
While the singer isn’t sure whether previous generations had it better, he emphasized that they lived in “simpler” times.
“You didn’t have the age of the internet and social media and people being able to…get on there and study every single thing,” Aldean explained, adding that bringing “prayer back in schools” would be a good place to start.
Last year, Aldean released a song called “Try That in a Small Town” which was pro-gun. According to PennLive, some deemed it pro-lynching and racist.
“The ‘Try That In A Small Town’ video contains multiple clips of protesters clashing with police and welcomes folks who might ‘cuss out a cop’ or ‘spit in his face’ or ‘stomp on the flag and light it up’ to ‘try that in a small town’ and ‘see how far you make it down the road,’” PennLive said.
The song received backlash but went no. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
“There was people of all color doing stuff in the video. That’s what I don’t understand,” Aldean told CBS News. “There was White people in there. There was Black people. I mean, this video did not shine light on one specific group and say, ‘That’s the problem.’ And anybody that saw that in the video, then you weren’t looking hard enough in the video, is all I can tell you.”
At a concert, Aldean likened the negative response to the song to “cancel culture,” given that CMT took the song off their radio channel.
“I just think there’s a lot of people out there that just want to go to work and come home, raise their kids, feel comfortable about sending their kids to school and knowing that they’re going to come home,” Aldean said about the song. “Or let their kids go to a movie on a weekend and not worry about something crazy happening to them in the parking lot or inside a movie theater.”
“It’s just we’re kind of living in the Wild West right now, and I think people are just kind of tired of it,” the Grammy Award winner added. “There’s just constant chaos and something going on. Somebody is always p—ed off about something, and it’s just one of those songs where there’s a lot of people that could relate to that because they’re just sick of it.”
Even though it’s the “Wild West,” Aldean loves the U.S.
“What I am is a proud American. I’m proud to be from here. I love our country,” Aldean said. “I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this ********* started happening to us.”
