Staind vocalist/guitarist Aaron Lewis hasn’t been one to shy away from sharing his hard right political beliefs over the years, be it airing out his support in interviews and social media, to leading politically-oriented chants at his live shows, or even expressing his beliefs in song form.
Despite the division politics in music can create, Lewis has found success with some of his most politically-driven compositions, including his 2021 solo country single “Am I The Only One“. That song in part found him taking aim at a left-wing rock & roll icon Bruce Springsteen, stating, “Am I the only one who quits singin’ along. Every time they play a Springsteen song.”
Lewis‘ continued dislike for Springsteen, who publicly feuded with U.S. President Donald J. Trump again earlier this year, was a topic of discussion during Lewis‘ recent appearance on ‘The Tucker Carlson Show‘. He said of Springsteen [transcribed by Blabbermouth.net]:
“I think that he [Springsteen] is a disgusting display of not appreciating what was handed to him, in this country as being an American, the success that he has had. The fact that he duped us all with one of the most anti-American songs ever and called it ‘Born In The USA‘ as some sort of celebration of how great it is to be born in the USA. I’m angry at myself for not seeing it for so long and actually giving him, in my mind, the credit of being a representation of blue-collar America.
I think that [Springsteen] has forgotten where he came from. I think that if you’re not careful doing this, this career that that me and him have both been so blessed to have had, if you’re not careful, it will consume you. And it’s obvious that it creates a situation where you’ve lost sight of the reality of the country that you live in because you’ve lived such a cush… you’ve had so much, you have so much that it’s really easy to take a stance that is so anti everything that you were lucky enough to have, lucky enough to create, lucky enough to change your situation in life. And he’s just lost touch with the struggles. He’s lost touch with the struggle.”
Speaking on Springsteen‘s personal politics, Lewis offered:
“It seems like most people who have lost touch with the true struggle of life, those are the people that vote for these fucking idiots. Those are the people that feel like they have to virtue signal. Those are the people that, somewhere along the way, they feel guilty for the success that they have had, so they somehow have to make it up with this nonsensical bullshit that… You grew up at the same time… I did. It was the most unracially driven…
The verbal beating that we took over and over and over, our whole childhood of you don’t judge a man by the color of his skin, you judge a man by the content of his character… It was the best that our country has ever been.
And I think that that didn’t work well for the Democrats and the Communists, because they thrive in the chaos. They want us at each other’s throats. They want us bickering internally so that we have no sense of shared country pride, that we have no sense of shared morality because they’ve created so many things artificially for us to fight about.”
Earlier in the chat, Lewis also spoke about being ‘blacklisted’ from radio. When asked if his music, in particular his solo country music, was played on radio, he responded [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“No. They won’t play me. They don’t like my thoughts on things… It’s nice to not have to bow down to the powers that be. It’s nice to not have to undermine my value in a market because the radio station wants to get as much out of my show as they can, so they sell my ticket for a low dough $10 ticket and they’ve just devalued my value in that market by selling such a cheap ticket, when I can sell hard tickets. I don’t need to sell myself short by doing favors for a radio station.”
When asked by Carlson if that’s how the practice works, Lewis replied, “First you sell your soul to the record label, and then you sell everything else you’ve got to the machine, which is the radio that drives music.” When Carlson asked if it was satellite radio or terrestrial, he responded, “All of it. Satellite just took over. Same concept… ”
Carlson then asked Lewis to reveal the “sleaze underbelly” of the music business, to which he replied
“We [musicians] are the the indentured servant. I mean, I think that indentured servitude laws are literally still on the books in California so that they can get away with what they do with us… Everything, every every penny that we ever get paid from a record label is all a loan. It’s all a loan…
To give you just a conceptual breakdown. This is all just kind of a… Take a dollar. 25 cents of that dollar — let’s just say it’s probably more — goes to the record label just because, because they invested. The rest of it, business management takes their percentage. Lawyer takes their percentage. Management takes their percentage. Business manager takes their percentage. Then the government takes their percentage, and then the overhead.
And then, what’s left, let’s call it 10 cents at the end of the day, that goes back to the record label to pay back the loan that they gave you of the money that they gave you up front. So any money that I’ve actually made from the record label, I’ve made them 80 times as much. Like that’s it of a dollar. Let’s just say there’s 12 cents left. The 12 cents actually goes to pay back the record label for the money that they gave you. It’s insane.”
When Carlson asked “how does that still exist?”, Lewis replied, “Because of the laws on the books. It’s insane.” Carlson then went on to ask if the people at the record label are demonstrating their worth in the situation, asking if they are potentially “creative geniuses”. Lewis replied:
“No… They’re the ones that can’t create… But they are making the most money off of the creatives. We’re here because who wouldn’t want a record label? Who who wouldn’t want to live this dream? Who wouldn’t want to make music if they’re a musician? Who wouldn’t want to make music as their livelihood?
So, we’re in a very fucked up situation where there’s a thousand people behind me that would kill me to have my freaking job. So, I got no leverage… I got no leverage with the with the industry because I’m easily chewed up and spit out because there’s a thousand people behind me waiting to get chewed up and spit out.”
When asked how long he participated in “that system”, Lewis responded:
“Uh it was 2012 or 13. That last Staind record that we put out was the the last record where I really had to do the dance and play the game with radio and and not ruffle any feathers and not offend anybody and play the game.
And then once that contract was done, I tried to play the game with country music, and then I released a song called ‘That Ain’t Country‘ that was basically talking about the whole industry that has created this amalgamation of music that doesn’t really fit in a genre. Um, and that was the end of it. I put out a song trying to get country radio to play it — about them — and they didn’t like that very much.”
He continued:
“It didn’t work to my advantage to be getting played on the radio, but it certainly freed me from being a servant to radio. So, it is so freeing to not be under that thumb. I can write songs that are over three-and-a-half minutes long. I can put lyrics in songs that that I want to put there.
You know, I’m no longer held to the industry standard because I’m not necessarily trying to participate in the industry game. I go out there, I play successful shows. I have a fan base that seeks out my music and doesn’t just listen to what the radio stuffs down their throat. And I’m very very blessed and very very lucky to that I don’t have to participate in the game anymore.”
Carlson then asked how digital service provider Spotify and streaming factor into the equation, with Lewis stating:
“I’m a Spotify billionaire. I’ve have over a billion spins on Spotify. If I only had a penny for every spin on Spotify, that would be fantastic. A dollar, a a quarter, a penny from every spin. With over a billion spins on Spotify. All I have is a plaque… By the time Spotify plays it, there’s so many people in the middle. I don’t even think a penny comes my way to be honest with you.”
When Carlson responded, “For a billion spins you made no money?’, Lewis explained:
“I don’t That’s not how Spotify works… I just know that that it cuts a lot of people in on my financial stream. That’s all I know… [People] That once again aren’t the creatives and they’re the ones making all the money. Some were creative in how they came up with something to get into somebody else’s money stream… I would call it being a leech.”
When Carlson expressed his disbelief that Lewis didn’t receive payment for over a billion streams, Lewis remarked:
“I might have. It certainly wasn’t enough for me to to notice, ‘Whoa, where the hell did all this money come from in my bank account?’ ‘Oh, I got spun over a billion times on Spotify. That’s why.’ Mm-mm. No. I mean, do I know for sure that no money came in? No.”
“…That’s basically the whole thing. The amount of money that we generate as the artist, what we get back for that is minuscule comparatively speaking to what everybody else with their hands in the cookie jar makes… I’m not complaining. I’m very blessed and I’m very lucky and I and I’m and and you know obviously God has a plan for me because this the way that all of this has just happened and I am just a passenger and and I’m not driving this ship.
I’m very lucky and very blessed, but I can still recognize the faults to the system and not necessarily be complaining about how amazing of a ride I’ve had doing this.”
He later added of the apparent discrepancy in his financial compensation for his art, “I wasn’t cut out… but I should have seen a pretty significant deposit into my account for that many spins…. I’m sure my record label got paid.” As for how he actually generates income from his music, Lewis stated:
“[Touring] is how and that’s why I work as hard as I do because that is where I make my money. I don’t make money on record sales. I don’t make money off of spins. I make money off of merch and actually playing shows.”
