Tattoos on This Town

"Tattoos on This Town"
Single by Jason Aldean
from the album My Kinda Party
Released September 5, 2011
Format Music download
Recorded 2010
Genre Country
Length 3:23
Label Broken Bow
Writer(s) Michael Dulaney, Wendell Mobley, Neil Thrasher
Producer Michael Knox
Jason Aldean singles chronology
"Dirt Road Anthem"
(2011)
"Tattoos on This Town"
(2011)

"Tattoos on This Town" is the title of a song written by Michael Dulaney, Wendell Mobley and Neil Thrasher, and recorded by American country artist Jason Aldean. It was released to country radio September 5, 2011, serving as the fourth single from his 2010 studio album, My Kinda Party.

Contents

Content

"Tattoos on This Town" is a moderate up-tempo country rock song, in which a man expresses his desires of leaving something behind on his small town to let others know he and his girlfriend were here.

Music video

The music video for "Tattoos on This Town" debuted for download on iTunes on September 20, 2011. It then premiered on VEVO on September 22, 2011, and on CMT and GAC on September 26, 2011.[1]

The video, directed by Wes Edwards, portrays a young couple's love story, starting from their teenage years, fast-forwarding through marriage and settling down, all the way to the young man's leaving for war. Some time later, his wife is paid a visit by two Marines who inform her about the death of her husband. It then fast-forwards through the young widow's life, in which she attends her husband's funeral and also gives birth to a son. As the video ends, the son, now a young boy (wearing his late father's old cap), throws a stone into the lake near the tree where his parents had carved "I Love You" many years before. Throughout the video, Aldean and his band perform inside an aircraft hangar, filmed in Smyrna, Tennessee.

Critical response

"Tattoos on This Town" has received generally positive reviews from critics. Billy Dukes of Taste of Country gave "Tattoos on This Town" 4.5 out of 5 stars, praising Aldean's performance and comparing the song to many of his previous hits, saying how this song "runs parallel to our own tales of mischief, lost innocence and heartache".[2] Ben Foster of Country Universe gave the song a B rating, praising the song's lyrical construction, as well as how it "succeeds due to the fact that it rises about the superficial idealization and cliché formulas that have bogged down a great deal of Aldean’s material".[3]

Chart performance

"Tattoos on This Town" debuted at number 18 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart in 2010 as an album cut based on downloads.[4] Upon its release as a single, the song debuted at number 59 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart the week of August 27, 2011 and peaked at number 2, making it his thirteenth top ten hit on this chart. It also debuted at number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week of October 8, 2011 and has peaked at number 38, his fourth consecutive Top 40 hit on this chart and seventh overall. Most recently, it debuted at number 96 on the Canadian Hot 100 and peaked at number 59.

Chart (2011-12) Peak
position
US Country Songs (Billboard)[5] 2
US Billboard Hot 100[6] 38
Canada (Canadian Hot 100)[7] 59

Year-end charts

Chart (2011) Position
US Country Songs (Billboard)[8] 64

References