Songfacts®:

• 3 Doors Down frontman Brad Arnold recorded "Wicked Man" in the midst of the troubled year of 2020. The song reflects both the state of the world at that time and the sense of paranoia that increasingly arose in response to it.
  
  At that time, the COVID-19 pandemic was in full force. Isolation of various degrees had been implemented all over the country and most of the world. The restriction of commerce led to thousands of small businesses shuttering their doors. Mass protests over police killings of African Americans, wealth inequality, and eroding freedoms swept over America's major cities. Cancel culture and increasingly polarized political views dominated social media discussions.
  
  Divisiveness was so bad that even though the essential facts were clear, interpretations of the meanings of those facts were sharply divided. To some, the urban unrest was peaceful protest, while to others it was riots. For some, the pandemic warranted shutting down society indefinitely. For others, it was an exaggerated risk not worth disrupting life over. Cancel culture was either the perfect way to achieve social equality or an authoritarian cause that had strayed far from its original purpose and become a toxic presence.
  
  No one knew what to believe. It had become nearly impossible to tell real information apart from disinformation. There seemed to be scientific studies "proving" anything people wanted them to prove, even contradictory hypothesis. None of the answers mattered when no one believed in the underlying data.
  
  In the face of so much madness, many started filling in the gaps with their own ideas and suspicions. What emerged was conspiracy theory as part of mainstream America. No longer relegated to outcasts in darkened rooms, conspiracy theory went mainstream. Everyone was paranoid, and everyone secretly harbored a pet conspiracy theory. The only real difference was in people's guesses as to who was "actually" behind everything. The "real puppet master" was either President Donald Trump, billionaire George Soros, Hillary Clinton, the Rothschild family, the Rockefeller family, Israel, China, Russia, the Deep State, or any of a couple dozen other top suspects. It mostly depended on whatever politics and ideologies someone carried into the madness.
  
  "Wicked Man" never names a specific target. It's abstract enough that it can probably fit into just about anyone's particular brand of paranoia, but a picture of Arnold did appear on Blabbermouth with Arnold wearing a shirt reading "#NeverSocialist USA." And in 2017, 3 Doors Down played at Trump's Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration, a move that was very controversial at the time. Arnold insisted the choice was a display of general patriotism rather than a show of support for Trump. At that time, support for Trump could be dangerous to an entertainer's career because opinions on the president were so divided. So, strange as it may seem to future generations, support for the president (particularly in the entertainment industry) was widely closeted.
• It does seem clear that Arnold is going after the news media with the lines:
  
  They keep us entertained inside a world before our eyes
  A never-ending circus to distract us from their lies
  
  Part of most conspiracy theory at the time was the notion that media had become politically biased to a degree that it was no longer valid, though which media was the corrupt media largely depended again on any given person's political and ideological starting points.
  
  Whatever the specifics of Arnold's political perspective, the gist of the song is that there are shadowy forces at place behind the scenes that are responsible for what seem to be spontaneous events. It's the kind of song that would have seemed nutty in any other time, but in 2020 it was just par for the course.
• Arnold recorded the song at Rivergate Studios in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He released it on his own Wild at Heart label.
• Greg Upchurch produced the song. He was the drummer for 3 Doors Down starting in 2005, after he'd come over to the band from Puddle of Mudd.
• This was the first solo single released by Arnold. Before the pandemic hit, his plan was to do a project celebrating the band's 2000 debut album The Better Life, which featured their signature song, "Kryptonite." The pandemic got in the way of that, so Arnold recorded Wicked Man instead.