As the frontman of popular nu-metal outfit Staind, Aaron Lewis’ gruff vocals were virtually inescapable in the early 2000s. The band broke into the mainstream with 2001’s quintuple-platinum Break the Cycle, which yielded the Top 5 Billboard Hot 100 hit “It’s Been Awhile.” What you may not know, however, is that Lewis found a second life as a country musician, releasing his full-length solo debut The Road in 2012. The Vermont-born artist, 53, has since put out four additional albums under the country music label. But if you haven’t heard his songs on the radio, Lewis says there’s a good reason.
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“They won’t play me,” the two-time CMT Music Awards nominee said during an Aug. 22 appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show. “They don’t like my thoughts on things.”
Aaron Lewis Says It All Started Here
Aaron Lewis says he can clearly pinpoint when his ostracization from mainstream radio began: with the 2008 election of President Barack Obama.
“I immediately recognized it as a horrible blow to our country, immediately,” he told the conservative pundit. “Not even knowing why yet. Like, I just knew… instinctively in my gut, I knew that we had made a massive, massive mistake as a country.”
During that time, Lewis said, reporters from TMZ began stopping him at the Los Angeles International Airport to ask for his opinion on the political climate. So he gave it to them.
“That was when I started expressing my feelings and opinions on politics,” he said.
Lewis’ most recent solo effort, 2024’s The Hill, peaked at No. 33 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums Chart. It failed to crack the Top 150 on the Billboard 200, never rising above No. 175.
[RELATED: 4 Musicians Who Ditched Their Genres To Make Country Music]
But He’s “Doing just Fine”
Despite his lack of airtime, Aaron Lewis says he is still managing to earn a living through making music. The “Outside” singer played about 175 shows last year, selling out “pretty much all of them.”
“I’m doing just fine,” he told Carlson. “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.”
Featured image by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
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