Jason Aldean opens SNL with Tom Petty's 'I won't back down'

Jason Aldean on SNL
(Image credit: NBC/Screenshot)

Country star Jason Aldean opened Saturday Night Live with a performance of Tom Petty's "I won't back down" as a tribute to the 58 people killed and the hundreds more wounded at the mass shooting in Las Vegas last week. Aldean was performing at the musical festival in Vegas when the shooting began, and Petty died Monday at the age of 66.

"So many people are hurting. There are children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, they're all part of our family," Aldean said at SNL. "So I want to say to them: We hurt for you and we hurt with you. You can be sure that we are going to walk through these tough times together every step of the way, because when America is at its best, our bond and our spirit is unbreakable."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.