Jesse McCartney Reveals How He Really Feels About His Hit 'Beautiful Soul' 20 Years After Its Release (Exclusive)

Twenty years may have gone by, but Jesse McCartney still remembers hearing his debut song on the radio for the very first time.

The singer, who turns 37 on Tuesday, April 9 and released a new EP called All’s Well on Friday, April 5, tells PEOPLE that “Beautiful Soul” is the tune that changed his life. 

“I remember the first time I heard that song, I was coming out of my SAT exam and I heard it on the radio on Z100,” he says, “and I remember thinking I didn't have to worry about what was going on with my SATs because I had made it!”

The song, which was released in 2004, climbed international charts. In the United States, the track peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, surpassed only by McCartney’s “Leavin’,” which hit No. 10 four years later. 

“It was sort of the beginning of this career that would transpire, and I remember traveling the world and going overseas and people that didn't speak English knew the song and knew my name,” McCartney recalls. “I couldn't communicate with them linguistically, but through music we could, and it was really this special, crazy moment.”

And while hearing his song on the radio for the first time made his exam score seem inconsequential, McCartney did in fact fair “pretty good.” 

“I mean, I did OK. I think I took it twice. I think the first time I kind of bombed it. I think the second time I got a 1210 or something, 1220. I was never an academic, but I did really well in English. I was not great at math,” he says with a laugh. 

Fast forward two decades, however, and McCartney is still “rocking with” the platform and the career that he says “Beautiful Soul” helped launch. His latest single has the cheeky title “Make a Baby (feat. Yung Gravy)", and he's gearing up for a 24-city U.S. tour beginning April 12.

McCartney says the song’s inspiration is just as the title suggests, and he and his wife, Katie Peterson, are beginning to dabble with the idea of expanding their own family.

“We got married two years ago, and I think that is the next step for us. But I mean, the song title was just inspired by trying to make a baby and how that works, where you're forced to perform at all hours of the day,” he says. “But we're not pregnant. We're certainly going down that road and talking about it.” 

“Make a Baby” is included as one of the five tracks on All’s Well, which McCartney describes as a “vintage and sexy” EP. 

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“It was just nice to do pop music like that again, which I haven't done in a really long time. And as far as the title goes, there is a song on the EP called 'The Well,' and it just sort of was a play on that because it's probably one of the more morose songs on the record, but I think I just wanted to leave the listener with sort of a redemptive touch, which is that all is well despite that song and despite the rest of the project,” McCartney says.

"And after 20 years of just making music, it just felt like a really nice, subtle, ‘Hey, all is still good. All is well.’”