Country artist Aaron Lewis was left stunned when pages from Taylor Swift’s upcoming album were found shredded as packaging material inside a fan’s order.
“Oh, look, there’s my new album, yet to be released, shredded like Taylor Swift merch wrappers,” the Staind frontman wrote on Thursday’s X. “What is that?”
Lewis was reacting to a fan’s unboxing video, which showed the fan bafflingly piecing together shredded paper to reveal the cover of Lewis’ unreleased record “Give Me Back My Country.”
Fans who ordered Swift’s new “I Knew It, I Knew You” CD collection initially thought the shredded pages contained Swift’s lyrics.
Instead, Swifties on social media noticed that the paper featured lyrics, artwork, and album pages for Lewis’ upcoming album. The album will be released by Swift’s former label, Big Machine Label Group, through July 17th, with merchandise handled by Universal Music Group.
Lewis, who does not use social media, said he first learned about the mix-up from the team.
“I don’t have social media. I didn’t have it when I was younger. I’ve never felt like social media was important to me,” he told USA Today.
“I didn’t even have a MySpace, so I didn’t see anything like that. And when this was brought to me, I just thought, ‘What’s going on? This is just weird.'”
The “Country Boy” singer said he can’t believe fans received parts of the album that aren’t even in stores yet.
“This is the cover of my new album, which hasn’t been released yet,” he said.
“As artists, we trust our distributors to provide us with material and trust that they will be responsible for what we deliver.”
Lewis, whose music had become more conservative since his early nu-metal days with Staind, said he had no explanation for how the album’s material was used as filler.
“I don’t know how this happened,” he admitted. “I don’t want to think there’s any malicious intent, but at the same time, I don’t know if there’s any malicious intent.”
“We haven’t even put out a record yet,” he continued. “It’s not like I just decided to take some old stuff that was sitting around and use it as packaging material. This is my new record. I don’t understand how something like that could happen.”
Lewis, who previously met Swift at a 2016 Nashville event for Big Machine, said he doesn’t blame the Grammy winner for the packaging mistake.
“We live in two very different worlds, and she’s such a big star that her world doesn’t intertwine with anyone’s world,” he said.
“Of course I’m not trying to drag her into this or blame her. It just happened to be my record jacket that was in a gift box for her fans.”
He also insisted he had no intention of capitalizing on the attention surrounding the incident.
“I don’t want people to think this was an opportunity to promote my new record,” Lewis said.
“I don’t understand how a shredded copy of my new album art ended up in a gift box for a Taylor Swift fan.”
