Review: This time, Jason Aldean’s Charlotte show looked and felt ... different
In significant ways, Jason Aldean’s sold-out concert at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte on Friday night looked and felt very much like the show he played here two Augusts ago.
Same parades of improbably tall 4x4 pickups rumbling into the parking lots; same parades of trucker-hatted guys and cowboy-booted girls marching in giggly gaggles through the gates and straight toward the beer-stand lines; and then — once the lights went down for the headliner — the same relentless parade of “oh-my-God-I-LOVE-this-one” hits from Aldean’s two-decade career blasting from the stage.
He hasn’t put out new music since 2023’s “Highway Desperado,” and the selections within the 2025 setlist were nearly 80% unchanged, just reshuffled.
But despite all the similarities, there was also definitely something different in the air.
For starters, it was cooler. Literally. 72-ish at sunset, unseasonably comfortable for late summer in this part of the South, weather that rendered the misting stations on the venue’s perimeter deserted and the shirts on the backs of Aldean and his band impressively dry.
“Oh, man, so glad to be here on a night when it’s not 157 degrees in Charlotte, North Carolina,” the singer said at one point between songs, sounding genuinely relieved.
And Aldean came across as being cooled-off in more ways than one. Whereas last time he went on a long, fiery rant about critics of his unapologetically jingoistic (and then-new) song “Try That in a Small Town,” on Friday night he was much less hot around the collar (in this case, the collar of a black Dale Earnhardt “Intimidator” T-shirt emblazoned with a giant “3”).
Instead, he mostly seemed content to let his voluminous collection of country smashes speak for themselves.
So this time, for instance, “Try That in a Small Town” needed no introduction: The first four piercing chords springing off of lead guitarist Kurt Allison’s low-slung electric were all it took to get the masses riled up, and — at least for those on the very edge of the stage — all it took to maintain that frenzy was the unhurried autograph session the singer held as the band noodled through an extended outro, using a Sharpie to autograph hats and boots and flesh.
Neither was there some sort of winding backstory to share about a song like, say, “Big Green Tractor.”
There was simply a video rendering of (what else?) a ginormous green “tractor,” with the “nose” of it spanning 50 feet across at mid-stage; the towering “cab” of it rising 30 feet high to the rear; and with Aldean and his band performing the 2009 track while appearing to stand on what would be the “hood,” thanks to a 15-foot riser on hydraulics.
It’s not that he had nothing to say this time, not that he completely lacked an edge.
I should have mentioned that, during “Try That in a Small Town,” Aldean flipped the bird (let’s assume not to his fans but to the left in general) to punctuate his “Well, that s--- might fly in the city, good luck” line. And I should point out that, during “Big Green Tractor,” he asked the crowd if it wanted to sing the final chorus — and when the response wasn’t enthusiastic enough for him, he said, “That kinda sounded like s---.”
He quipped that, because it was Friday night, “None of you guys should have to go work tomorrow,” and “if you do, you need a new job.”
Later, he said, only half-jokingly, “Y’all ... started drinking about 11, 12 o’clock today gettin’ ready for the show,” and “some of your friends didn’t even make it in — they’re passed out in the truck outside. Am I not right?”
At the same time, unlike other artists of the bro-country ilk, Aldean personally refrained from boozing it up throughout the show, waiting to pull out a red Solo cup with a shot of tequila in it until there were just 11 minutes left in a set that ran 97. “I haven’t had a drink all night because, obviously, I gotta play for you guys.
“And you guys don’t want that to suck.”
I’ve now seen him three times in the last six years, and while I know he is known to chug beer to end shows (something he didn’t do Friday night), I can’t recall whether he showed similar restraint with his alcohol intake previously.
But I do know this: Aldean was a little more mature — and a lot more reflective — than I’ve seen him before.
It wasn’t simply that he noted how it’s now been two decades (!) since he dropped his first album. It was the whiff of genuine disbelief in his voice.
It wasn’t simply that he twice shouted-out iconic Queen City country-music club Coyote Joe’s, initially in setting up 2005’s “Why,” his first-ever country-chart-topper (which he certainly performed there back in the day); then again while making his way to “Dirt Road Anthem” (although by the time that rap-infused crowd-pleaser was released, in 2011, Aldean had already made the leap to big-budget-amphitheater shows). It was this ... I don’t know, this wistfulness he seemed to emanate — no, seriously — for grinding it out in a bar, in front of 200 people.
“Sometimes you think people forgot about some of the old songs,” Aldean said in another nostalgic moment, “and last year I found myself kinda scrolling on TikTok or Instagram or one of those damn things, and I see these teenagers are sitting on the tailgate of a truck looking all sad and s---, and they’re playing one of our old songs, that probably came out before they were born.”
He smiled softly.
“Pretty good feeling. It’s like, Oh, maybe people didn’t forget about some of these songs.”
Again, it sounded like there was some true longing in his voice, and while it was probably scripted, it didn’t feel fake-y like it so often does. And sound was all you could go on, because Aldean wore his cowboy hat with the brim dipped down low — so low that the shadow of it almost completely obscured his eyes, making it hard to read anything on his face.
He finally removed it right before launching into a rollicking rendition of the night-capper, 2009’s “She’s Country,” but swapped it out quickly for a black trucker hat bearing his name. And with that tequila shot coursing freshly through his blood, the 48-year-old seemed to be feeling 28 again.
He grooved, grinning, over to the railing way off to the left, where he shook and slapped hand after hand in Section 3 as he spouted the lyrics to one of his most superficial but also most crowd-pleasing hits (A hell raisin’ sugar when the sun goes down / Mama taught her how to rip up the town ...).
Then back on stage — after firing a triple shot of T-shirts out of a massive, Stars-and-Stripes-wrapped bazooka — he took off the hat, signed it, and Frisbeed it out into the crowd to end the night.
But as he walked off, hat-less, I noticed something else I’d never noticed when I’d seen him before.
It’s something I have, too, and it’s something that can sometimes also make me yearn for the days when I was a younger man: a bald spot.
Jason Aldean’s setlist
1. “Hicktown”
2. “Lights Come On”
3. “Amarillo Sky”
4. “Why”
5. “When She Says Baby”
6. “Whiskey Drink”
7. “Night Train”
8. “Burnin’ It Down”
9. “Crazy Town”
10. “Big Green Tractor”
11. “Take a Little Ride”
12. “Trouble With a Heartbreak”
13. “The Truth”
14. “Tattoos on This Town”
15. “Fly Over States”
16. “Try That in a Small Town”
17. “You Make It Easy”
18. “Dirt Road Anthem”
19. “Girl Like You”
20. “If I Didn’t Love You”
21. “My Kinda Party”
22. “She’s Country”
This story was originally published August 23, 2025 at 11:01 AM.
