“Fame at a young age is often more of a curse than a blessing, and surviving it is not easy,” said the veteran songwriter Diane Warren after news broke of the death of Aaron Carter. Carter, who has been found dead at his home, aged 34, was a true child prodigy, beginning his musical career when he was seven. The first two singles from his 1997 debut album (released a few days before his 10th birthday), Crush on You and Crazy Little Party Girl, both became Top 10 hits in the UK. The album reached No 12 in the UK, and sold 100,000 copies in the US.
Carter’s success became rocket-assisted with the arrival in 2000 of his second album, Aaron’s Party (Come Get It), a contagiously commercial batch of songs including the title track, I Want Candy, and That’s How I Beat Shaq. These scored valuable exposure on the Nickelodeon and Disney channels, powering the album to 3m sales in the US. Opening slots for shows by the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears sent Carter’s profile soaring, and in 2001 he began to branch into acting, appearing in the Disney Channel comedy series Lizzie McGuire and taking the role of JoJo the Who in Seussical, a Broadway musical.
The summer of 2001 brought his third album, Oh Aaron, which could not outsell its predecessor but reached No 7 on the US album chart and shifted 1m copies. A mix of pop-rap and ballads, it was memorable for its title song and ebullient accompanying video, in which Aaron has to make a deal with his brother, Nick, to get Backstreet Boys concert tickets for his adoring female fans, families and friends. Entertainment Weekly found the album “as harmless (for kids) as it is unlistenable (for adults)”. Carter also contributed songs to movie soundtracks, including Life Is a Party from Rugrats in Paris (2000), Little Bitty Pretty One from The Princess Diaries (2001) and several tracks on Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001).
His fourth album, Another Earthquake! (2002), arrived when the artist was still only 15, but caught him at a midway point between child star and awkward teenager. It reached the US Top 20, but his voice had lost some of its freshness, and despite some smart work by a host of producers its sales tailed off rapidly. It was his third and final album for the Jive label.
Carter was born in Tampa in Florida, with his twin sister, Angel. His parents, Jane (nee Spaulding) and Robert, ran the Garden Villa retirement home, having previously been proprietors of the Yankee Rebel bar in Westfield, New York state. Aaron’s older brother, Nick, a future member of the Backstreet Boys, had been born in New York state, while sisters Bobbie Jean and Leslie arrived after the family’s move to Florida.
The seven-year-old Aaron became lead singer with Dead End, but he quit the group because he preferred pop music to their alt-rock tendencies. His first performance as a solo artist came in Berlin in 1997, when he sang a version of the Jets’ dance-pop hit Crush on You as the opening act to the Backstreet Boys.
After he split from the Jive label, Carter’s career began to hit rough water. His parents filed a lawsuit against his former manager Lou Pearlman (also the svengali behind the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync), claiming he had failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from Carter’s debut album, which had been released on Pearlman’s Trans Continental label. An out-of-court settlement was eventually reached.
Nevertheless, Carter’s 2005 single Saturday Night was on the Trans Continental label with Pearlman as executive producer. It featured that year in the straight-to-video film Popstar, which featured Carter in a largely autobiographical role. But the following year Trans Continental brought a lawsuit against the singer, claiming that he had reneged on a recording deal he had signed in 2004, when he was 17. In late 2006 Aaron starred alongside his four siblings in the E! network’s reality TV show House of Carters. In 2009 he competed on TV in Dancing With the Stars.
Carter now found himself confronted with a backlog of issues related to his mental health and a history of substance abuse. In 2011 he did a rehab stint at the Betty Ford centre in Rancho Mirage, California, but his struggle against various addictions would continue to overshadow his career. His musical output became erratic, though he collaborated with Flo Rida on the single Dance With Me (2009) and paired with Busta Rhymes on Planet Rock (2010). In 2011 he took the lead role of Matt in the off-Broadway production of the musical The Fantasticks.
He was back on the concert circuit in 2013 with the After Party Tour, then undertook the 50-date Wonderful World Tour in 2014-15. In 2018 he released his fifth album, Love.
But his final years were blighted by personal problems. In 2019 Nick and Angel filed for a restraining order against him, alleging that he had threatened to kill Nick’s wife and unborn child. Leslie died in 2012 from a prescription drug overdose, and Aaron claimed it was she who had introduced him to “huffing”, or inhaling drugs through the nose. In 2019 he announced that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Carter is survived by his son, Prince, born last year. He had lost custody of the child, but had recently undergone treatment at the Lionrock Recovery rehab centre in California, in the hope of re-establishing his relationship with Prince’s mother, Melanie Martin.