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Staind singer Aaron Lewis‘ new album, Give Me Back My Country, hasn’t even been released yet, but it’s already in the hands of Taylor Swift fans, at least in shredded form. It turns out that the CD booklet has been used as packing material for the pop superstar’s new Toy Story 5 single “I Knew It, I Knew You.”
Lewis himself discovered the awkward situation when his social media team alerted him to videos of Swifties opening up their packages and discovering his shredded CD booklet being used to protect Swift’s single.
Along with sharing one of the videos, Lewis wrote on X/Twitter, “Oh look, there’s my new album, that hasn’t even been released yet, shredded as packaging paper in Taylor Swift merch. Ain’t that some shit.”
Lewis told USA Today, “I don’t have any social media. I didn’t have it when I was younger. It’s never felt important to me. I never even had a MySpace. So I don’t see anything of that type of stuff. And when this was brought to me, I was just like, ‘What is going on? This is just weird.'”
He added, “That’s the cover to my brand new record that hasn’t even been put out yet,” Lewis said. “As artists, we put our trust in the distribution companies to get our material way up front and trust that they’ll be responsible with what it is that we give them.”
The Staind frontman went on to say, “I don’t know how this happened. I hate to think it’s malicious, but at the same time, I don’t know that it’s not… I haven’t even put the record out yet. It’s not like it’s old stuff that was just sitting around that they decided to make packing material out of. It’s my new record. I just don’t understand how something like that can happen.”
That all said, Lewis doesn’t harbor any resentment toward Swift, noting, “We live in two very, very different worlds. And she’s such a huge star that her world doesn’t intertwine with anyone’s worlds. I certainly wouldn’t be trying to bring her into this or blame her for anything. It just so happens that it was my record cover in her gift box for her fans.”
While the right-wing country-rocker and the pop superstar don’t run in the same circles, they have met. And they bonded over their shared love of the number 13, with Lewis’ birthday on April 13th and Swift’s birthday on December 13th.
“There was some block party thing that was happening downtown and I played a set during it and she was there and we got pictures,” he recalled. “We were cordial and friendly.”
Swift is rumored to be getting married to Travis Kelce this weekend at Madison Square Garden, while Lewis is hitting the road with Staind for the band’s Break the Cycle 25th anniversary tour beginning in September (pick up tickets here).
Check out Aaron Lewis’ reaction to a Swiftie discovering his shredded album in the packaging for Taylor Swift’s new single below.
Oh look, there’s my new album, that hasn’t even been released yet, shredded as packaging paper in Taylor Swift merch. Ain’t that some shit. pic.twitter.com/77KhZ1ziI2
— Aaron Lewis (@Aaronlewismusic) June 25, 2026
English (US) · 