‘This is a prime example of Jason being left out of things in the industry’
Brittany Aldean is blaming “wokeness” after her husband, Jason Aldean, was left off Billboard’s top 100 country artists of all time list.
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The list’s top spots went to Dolly Parton (No. 1), Johnny Cash (No. 2), Willie Nelson (No. 3), Loretta Lynn (No. 4) and Hank Williams Sr. (No. 5), with newer artists like Eric Church (No. 56), Morgan Wallen (No. 79), and Maren Morris (No. 99) also notching spots on the list.
But Aldean’s exclusion raised eyebrows on social media. Since breaking out in 2005 with his self-titled debut, Aldean has racked up more than 20 million in album sales and more than 25 No. 1 singles. He has also been nominated for five Grammys, won two Billboard Awards and six American Country Awards, among other accolades.
As country music fans debated Aldean’s name being left out, his outspoken wife Brittany teed off on the publication.
Aldean, who along with his wife is a noted supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, courted controversy in 2023 when he released his country anthem Try That in a Small Town.
“There was people of all colour doing stuff in the video. That’s what I don’t understand,” he responded. “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.”
When Aldean learned that the courthouse had been the site of a lynching, he said he probably wouldn’t have filmed the video there. But, Aldean said, “I’m not going to go back 100 years and check on the history of this building. Honestly, if you’re in the south, you could probably go to any smalltown courthouse, and be hard-pressed to find one that hasn’t had a racial issue over the years at some point. That’s a fact.”
Earlier this summer, Aldean dedicated the song to Trump during a show in Nashville after a gunman tried to assassinate him in Pennsylvania.
With Billboard’s snub making headlines, two of Aldean’s bandmates, bassist Tully Kennedy and guitarist Kurt Allison, suggested the omission was influenced by the singer’s politics.
But Aldean wasn’t surprised, commenting that the slight “shouldn’t come as a shock.”
“People ask if we still have a chip on our shoulder and feel like we have something to prove???” he commented on Allison’s post with a laughing emoji. “Hell yea we do and this is a prime example why!! We’ll just keep hammerin and do what we do. Same as we always have.”