At 14, he was chosen to perform alongside Liza Minnelli, Gladys Knight and Missy Elliott at Michael Jackson’s 30th anniversary celebration at Madison Square Garden. That’s an incredible list of accomplishments by anyone’s standards, but – as seems to be the case with so many who find themselves in the public eye from such a young age – Carter’s adulthood was defined by his struggles. Born in the small town of Rockwood, East Tennessee, Carter’s bubblegum sound and mini-bad boy image made him the definitive kid of the millennium. Just innocent enough to be family-friendly, but rebellious enough to be the number one heartthrob for girls who grew up wearing giddy headbands and reading J-14, his messy blonde hair and Eminem-via-Dennis the Menace look they stood out even in an oversaturated landscape of manufactured pop bands and Mickey Mouse Club alumni. His music videos were boring and unremarkable, set in the familiar worlds of movie dates, photo booths, street parties, basketball courts, clubs – typical adult settings that made preadolescence look and feel like an unruly, insular universe in itself. Aaron Carter: Aaron’s Party (Come Get It) – video In 2001, Carter switched to acting, making an appearance as himself on Lizzie McGuire, as well as guest appearances on the Nickelodeon comedy All That. He also lent his voice to the theme songs for the PBS animated series Liberty’s Kids and provided much of the soundtrack for the exciting Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. He would later form an infamous love triangle with Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan, contributing to his cult following as a kind of teenage Lothario. In many ways, both good and bad, he was a proto-Justin Bieber – a teenage dream to be bought and sold, with what would prove to be little respect for his own humanity. “I am deeply sorry that life was so difficult for you and that you had to struggle in front of the whole world,” Duff wrote on Instagram after news of Carter’s death. “You had a charm that was absolutely effervescent. Boy, my teenage self loved you deeply.’ Like many poster children of his generation, Carter’s career has had a dark side – the extent of which was little known until the relatively recent reckoning of how we treat those in the viewing public – especially teenagers engaged in mainstream US entertainment landscape. Carter’s departure from the music industry came around 2002, when his parents filed a lawsuit against his former manager Lou Perlman, the late, disgraced pop mogul behind several boy band juggernauts, including the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync. The lawsuit alleged that Pearlman had failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties for Carter’s debut album, which was released through Pearlman’s production company and label, Trans Continental. In separate suits, the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync both asked to be released from their contracts. Carter’s lawsuit was settled out of court, but his legal troubles would continue when Trans Continental sued him in 2006, alleging he reneged on a recording deal outlined in contracts he signed as a minor. (After an FBI investigation years later, Pearlman pleaded guilty to conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2008 and died in federal custody in 2016.) Aaron Carter in 2015. Photo: Britta Pedersen/EPA The years that followed were filled with career mishaps, controversies and struggles with money (Carter filed for bankruptcy in 2013), drug addiction and poor mental health: in 2019, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He tried to reboot himself several times during the 2010s, returning to touring alongside roles in off-Broadway productions, appearances on reality shows like Dancing with the Stars and his own series House of Carters. In September 2017, he made a widely reported appearance on the US show The Doctors, in which he tested positive for opiates and benzodiazepines. He checked himself into rehab for drug addiction later that year. In 2018, he released Love, his first album in 16 years, and began making music under the rap moniker Kid Carter. However, the latter years of his life were largely defined by his troubled family life – he is estranged from many of his relatives, at one point claiming they tried to put him on a conservatorship – as well as a tumultuous relationship with his later partner, Melanie Martin, with whom he had a child in 2021. Carter entered rehab for a fifth time in September 2022. Decades after the glitz and glitz of the ’90s and ’00s, the underbelly of the era’s highly profitable entertainment industry continues to be revealed through the tragic and often long-overdue stories of celebrities like Britney Spears, Macaulay Culkin, Amanda Bynes. Lindsay Lohan and Demi Lovato, not to mention many others who defined their generation from an incredibly young age. Carter similarly falls into an age bracket that now commands an enormous amount of goodwill from those who grew up with him on their TV screens and bedroom walls, while also being a pop generation too old to have benefited from the kindness of the older mental health and addiction awareness. As tributes pour in from loved ones, peers and fans around the world, the feeling is overwhelmingly one of sympathy. “Fame at a young age is often more of a curse than a blessing and survival is not easy,” said hit songwriter Diane Warren, but it shouldn’t be such a common narrative that fame comes at the expense of humanity. It’s a miserable thing to hope for a day when our youngest stars grow up to live long and full role model lives, rather than being lucky enough not to become cautionary tales.
