The ongoing debate about today’s country music not being “real country” continued this week when Aaron Lewis—lead singer of the rock group Staind and now country singer—stepped onto a Colorado stage and told the audience the inspiration behind his latest country single,”That Ain’t Country.”
“I’d like to thank Sam Hunt–oh, I know, he’s so pretty to look at,” said Aaron from the stage. “I’d like to thank Luke Bryan, for most of his stuff. He surprises me every once in a while. I would like to thank Dan + Shay. I’d like to thank Cole Swindell. And every other motherf***** that is just choking all the life out of country music.”
That’s when all hell broke loose and the Luke, Sam, Cole and Dan + Shay defenders took to social media to call out the rocker. NCD caught up with Aaron shortly after he made the remarks, for which he concedes that he’s sorry “that I might have offended you, but I don’t apologize for what I said.”
“It’s all taken out of context. I was playing at a motorcycle rally,” says Aaron. “I was playing to a whole bunch of people that appreciate the old country music. I was playing to that crowd. I said it in a manner that got a really, really good reaction from the crowd that I was playing to. It certainly is no sort of personal attack on any of the artists that I may have, in a moment of playing to the crowd that I was playing to, called out by name. It’s nothing personal. I’m not saying that they’re not good people. I’m not saying that the songs aren’t catchy songs—that if I hear them on the radio I’m not stuck singing myself. I’m just questioning where the connection is to what defined the genre. That’s all.
“I’m sure that way more offensive things have been said over the years, through a microphone on stage in front of a certain crowd of people, than what I said. If you’re offended by what I have to say, you might want to question why. I don’t know what to tell you. Again, this is no personal attack on anybody. I’m sure that they are great, amazing people. In no way am I saying anything about them or their character. I’m just simply wondering where the connection is to the music from the past that defines the genre.”
And with that, a new song was born. Aaron’s latest single, “That Ain’t Country,” is the result of that wondering. A song that laments the fact that today’s country songs are filled with “tales of good times and happy endings” that aren’t realistic to everyday life. The song searches for the tunes that are “full of truth and consequences, all the things gone wrong.”
“I grew up on my grandfather’s country,” says Aaron. “That’s the country music that is kind of embedded into my soul. It was the soundtrack to my childhood, and is the soundtrack to so many memories that I hold onto dearly. I wrote the song because the landscape of country music these days is a little bit unrecognizable. I ponder and I question where the influences—aside from name drops here and there—where are the influences of what defined the genre of country? I don’t hear them. It’s merely my opinion and it’s merely just something that I noticed, and something that I chose to write a song about. I’m not saying what is country music right now isn’t creating number ones and it isn’t selling records. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just questioning where is the connection aside from name-dropping to the music?”
Aaron, who hails from Springfield, Mass., reached stardom as the frontman for the rock band Staind. He saw success with the seven studio albums the band released, including Dysfunction, Break the Cycle—which included the Top 10 hit “It’s Been a While”—and 14 Shades of Grey. But in 2012 the band took a hiatus and Aaron was able to return to the music he grew up on by putting out his first solo country album, The Road.
“I was force-fed [country] as a kid,” recalls Aaron. “Then when I was old enough to choose my own path of music listening, as most adolescent boys do, I rebelled against what was being force-fed to me prior. The first albums I ever owned, as my albums that I could go and listen to on my own, were given to me by my babysitter. It was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, it was Kiss’s Alive 2 and Destroyer, AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds and TNT. That was my first ability and taste of being able to experience that music all by myself and it was my choice to listen to it. That really played a big part in the road that I went down as far as ending up in a rock band.
