Aaron Lewis, frontman of the rock band Staind, has made a second home in country music throughout the last decade, but hadn’t had much chart success, until now. The musician is enjoying a No. 1 hit on the Hot Country Songs chart with “Am I the Only One,” his latest conservative-minded anthem that panders to rightist fears and beliefs.
Lewis began performing the acoustic guitar-driven number during his solo concerts earlier this year. The tune’s politicized content — the lyrics mention Confederate monuments’ removal, pointedly diss the left-leaning rocker Bruce Springsteen and more — started drawing attention in April.
On July 2, Lewis released a studio recording of “Am I the Only One” as a standalone single, his first solo release of 2021. Two weeks later, as Taste of Country reports, the song debuted in the top spot on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the week ending July 17.
That chart combines streaming, sales and radio airplay to determine its ranking, but the song’s official add date is still a week and a half away (July 26). “Am I the Only One” sold 59,300 digital copies in its first week out (July 2-8), which also put it at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Country Digital Songs Sales chart and No. 2 on the all-genre Digital Song Sales ranking.
What’s perhaps more surprising is that the song’s charged lyrics aren’t even wholly Lewis’ own. He shares co-writing credit on “Am I the Only One” with country songwriters Ira Dean and Jeffrey Steele.
In June, Lewis blamed Democrats for “every racist law” in America during a live show. He’s previously made his political stance abundantly clear in similarly provocative songs such as “If I Was a Liberal.”
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