Aaron Lewis has opened up about his controversial solo track ‘Am I The Only One’, on which the Staind frontman and conservative rallied against Bruce Springsteen, American liberals, and the removal of Confederate-era statues.
Lewis addressed the track in a new interview with right-wing provocateur Candace Owens, appearing on her Daily Wire podcast Candace. He noted that he’d written the track with Jeffrey Steele and Ira Dean as a response to “what we all just had gone through in our own lives with the shutdown and with the craziness that we’ve watched on TV over the last 18 months”.
“I feel like you don’t have to stand on one side or the other to have, at one point during all of this, looked at your television and screamed some profanities at it,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “Like, ‘What is happening to this country?’ We’re one nation under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Towards the end of ‘Am I The Only One’ (which you can listen to below), Lewis sings: “Am I the only one who quits singin’ along / Every time they play a Springsteen song?”
When asked by Owens why he singled out the legendary heartland rocker, Lewis said: “Because he’s always portrayed himself as the all-American middle-class guy. And during all of this craziness, he said that if one man is re-elected to the office of presidency that he was gonna move to Australia. How American is that? You’re gonna bail on America just because you don’t like the guy that may have gotten into office?”
Lewis also pointed out that although he’d initially received some pushback for the concept of a right-wing protest song, he found support in unexpected places, such as Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta.
Musing on why other artists might be hesitant to espouse right-wing views in their music, he said: “They’re scared. Look what happens when you speak up these days. Look what happens when you try to speak truth and you try to speak fact. Because the truth and the facts don’t necessarily look good to one particular side.”
Have a listen to Lewis’ full interview with Owens below:
Lewis has long been known for his incendiary opinions. Earlier in the year, he hit out at Donald Trump’s second impeachment, saying it “couldn’t have been more unconstitutional” and claiming that “the agendas they’re pushing now have caused more deaths than all the wars that have taken place in the world”.
In 2018, Lewis was embroiled in a bitter feud with Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland, after Borland described an encounter wherein Lewis had insulted him in an airport.