The Impossible Task of Understanding Aaron Carter (Part 3)
The third installment in a multi-part series dissecting the trials and tribulations of troubled pop singer Aaron Carter
This is Part Three of a multi-part series exploring the life of Aaron Carter. If you haven’t read Part One or Part Two, I suggest taking a look at them before continuing.
(If you appreciate works like this but aren’t necessarily interested in upgrading to a paid subscription, please consider buying me a coffee – this series didn’t write itself!)
When we last left off, the year was 2013. A judge had just granted pop singer Aaron Carter Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which involves liquidating assets to pay off creditors in exchange for debt relief.
Though generally considered a last-resort solution, multiple sources claim that Aaron only had about $8,000 USD worth of assets and was working with an average monthly salary of about $2,000 USD at the time of filing. After selling off just about all of his valuables (with the exception of an English Bulldog named King1), Carter was cleared of over $2 million USD worth of debt.
As scary as the word ‘bankruptcy’ sounds, Aaron was relieved of a massive burden that had plagued quite literally every waking moment of his adult life. Theoretically, he was free.
Unfortunately, in practice, this positive development did very little to quell the turbulence of Aaron’s day-to-day existence.
Mainstream media outlets briefly renewed their interest in the youngest member of the Carter family in early 2014, when Aaron started using Twitter to proclaim his love for childhood sweetheart Hilary Duff over a decade after their split. In a move described as a “public cry of desperation” by MTV News, Carter began openly referring to Duff as the “love of his life” following an announcement that she’d separated from her ex-husband. Among the nostalgic millennials that had once diligently watched the romance play out on the covers of teen magazines (before promptly forgetting their idols post-breakup), there was some hopeful buzz that the public declarations might lead the two star-crossed lovers back into each other’s arms. To those people’s disappointment, Duff repeatedly responded to Aaron’s advances with disinterest and confusion, citing that the pair had hardly spoken in the ten years following the end of their relationship.
In the grand scheme, it may seem that an unrequited crush would be little more than a footnote in our protagonist’s story. But as time would pass, it would become increasingly evident that the Tweets pining after love long-lost were some of the earliest indicators that something wasn’t quite right with Aaron.
Pinpointing what, precisely, was the primary driver of the odd behavior is difficult (if not impossible) to determine with any degree of certainty. As previously mentioned, Aaron had openly consumed alcohol and smoked marijuana since his mid-teens2. Behind closed doors, he also struggled with an addiction to inhalants that escalated following the death of his older sister Leslie. But in addition to the drugs, Aaron was beginning to exhibit signs of deeper mental illness. Later in life, Carter would share with the press that he had received a diagnosis of multiple personality disorder3, schizophrenia, “manic depression”4, and acute anxiety5. Though he may not have necessarily had a name for what was going on in his head in 2014, he was almost certainly already grappling with the psychological symptoms of these chronic conditions6.
Though the exact ailments were unclear and the substances running through his blood fluctuated, throughout the latter half of his life, Aaron engaged in a constant battle against co-occurring disorders that fueled one another. Early drug experimentation may have triggered or exacerbated some of the mental health issues that he faced as an adult7. As anxiety, depression, and ultimately delusion became steady fixtures in Aaron’s reality, drugs and alcohol became a means of self-medication. In his case, seeking professional help merely resulted in more drugs (mostly benzodiazepines like Xanax) being added to the chemical cocktail.
Delineating where Aaron’s addiction ended and illness began is an exercise in futility. The two demons ultimately homogenized into a single horrific monster with a stronghold on Aaron’s body and mind far too powerful for any man to break through alone.
Nevertheless, Carter persisted in his musical pursuits. In 2015 he launched the Wonderful World Tour across at least 50 cities. Like his previous 2013 tour, he mainly focused on visiting college towns and continued to run promotions such as offering stops at high-paying sororities and ticket upgrades for early-bird orders. His average setlist still included mainstay hits like “How I Beat Shaq” mostly geared toward nostalgic fans. But Aaron also began introducing new material, presumably the culmination of the beats he’d tweaked and toyed with since turning eighteen8. Though many of the songs were never officially released on an album, EP, or streaming service9, live concert video made by fans still survives on Youtube and reveals that Carter had evolved lyrically and musically, having developed a “voice” distinct from his boy band roots.
By the time 2016 rolled around, Aaron was confident enough to reintroduce himself to the world as a musician fully matured from the little mischief-maker of the early 00s. On April 1st of that year, he released his first single in 14 years, titled “Fool’s Gold”. With R&B and electronica influences, it marked a new era for Aaron’s music. He became so committed to promoting the new material that on at least one occasion he outright refused to perform his old singles and became visibly upset at an audience demanding that he belt out a few verses of “I Want Candy”.
If there was any doubt before, it was now clear that Aaron was a man fully divorced from the teenage dream that once was. Having weathered a seemingly endless stream of storms, he was no longer capable of the unbridled brightness necessary to excel at bubblegum pop. The work he now poured his soul into was colored by the demons – both real and imagined – that so often prey upon artists. Ever the optimist, through his music, he hoped to keep those demons at bay.
But, as difficult as his path had been thus far, the worst was yet to come.
Even when Aaron wasn’t on the stage or in the studio, most of his time was spent performing.
In between money woes and music and mental anguish, Aaron continued making semi-regular reality television appearances. He was the subject of a short-lived show on Spike TV called Life or Debt, which half-heartedly tackled some of his continued financial difficulties. He also appeared in a celebrity-centric Food Network cookoff in which he created perhaps the most heinous attempt at a macaroni salad10 I have ever seen. But the camera he performed for most often was the one attached to his cell phone.
For context, 2016 was a revolutionary year for live streaming. With cameras becoming just short of a ubiquitous feature in cell phones, more people than ever developed an interest in broadcasting themselves. Twitch had firmly established itself as a force to be reckoned with after Amazon acquired it for $970 million USD, prompting platforms like Instagram and Facebook to launch livestream capabilities of their own.
Around this time, Aaron Carter took a liking to Periscope, a now-defunct app acquired by Twitter. As evidenced by his use of ustream.tv as early as 2009 and his longstanding habit of sharing his cell phone number, the idea of connecting directly with fans always appealed to Aaron. But faced with the challenges that come with far fewer mobile devices, much slower internet connections, and a general lack of demand for content, livestreaming in 2009 was a task that required a degree of foresight and yielded very little in terms of visible payoff.
But in 2016, the production and consumption of media became increasingly unbound by location, available almost anywhere with the tap of a button. In a matter of just a few years, that desire Aaron felt to interact and broadcast at a moment’s notice had become infinitely more feasible.
So, Aaron started recording.
Many of Aaron’s Periscopes have been lost. At some point, he deleted the channel entirely, so only a few snippets reuploaded onto secondary media platforms (i.e. Youtube, Twitter) are still viewable today. That said, surviving snippets suggest that his earliest streams were sometimes silly, oftentimes outrageous, but tame in comparison to what later broadcasts had in store.
Much of the time, Aaron used his Periscopes as a means of promoting whatever music he happened to be working on (not unlike what he was doing back on ustream). But little by little, he began sharing small snippets of his personal life. One Periscope features a night out with friends at a Waffle House, asking random passersby to greet streamers. Another video features Aaron looking at Tibetan Mastiff puppies11 on his laptop. In these moments, it's easy to see why many viewed Carter as endearing.
But Tweets and other online comments from the time period suggest that some of Aaron’s more impulsive Periscope stunts bordered on unsettling. Viewers reported Carter broadcasting a tattoo artist ink the word “LOVE” across his neck on at least one occasion. Screenshots captured from a separate Periscope show the singer giving himself an impromptu haircut.
It goes without saying that Aaron Carter super fans tuned in religiously. Nick Carter super fans also frequently watched, simply because Aaron was the Backstreet Boy’s brother. But gradually the streams caught the attention of morbidly curious individuals not hyper-allegiant to either Carter brother, their interests piqued by the comic tragedy of it all more so than the merits of the musician.
Determining how this third group was initially drawn to Aaron’s live streams admittedly involves some speculation on my part. Accounting for the origin of every individual voyeur – especially the silent majority, spamming emojis in relative anonymity – is a task far too heavy for a single Substack writer working a second job so that she can publish articles about Aaron Carter pro bono.
So I hope you’ll bare with me for a moment while I hypothesize on where Carter’s followers suddenly came from:
As Aaron was just starting to experiment with Periscope, his Twitter grew more and more shocking. Looking at Aaron’s social media posts on any given day provided instant fodder for tabloid clickbait. One day, he’d use his platforms to endorse 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump. The next, he’d share a picture of his bare butt. His behavior outside the internet inspired a flurry of media fluff pieces, too. Half-stories with no follow-up over everything from an episode of road rage to the alleged short-changing of a web intern made the rounds on celebrity gossip outlets like TMZ and Page Six. None of these stories ever garnered much attention, but they were never really meant to do much more than collect page views. Nevertheless, every time one of these vignettes was published, they’d find their way to the Facebook feed or trending topics of some millennial that hadn’t thought about Aaron Carter in well over a decade. Perplexed at how the bright-eyed child star had become an eccentric at best, unhinged at worst, the familiar-but-not-too-familiar would venture over to Twitter or Instagram to personally investigate Aaron’s online presence.
And when they’d arrive, they’d find the vestiges of that blonde little kid, staring back and speaking directly to just about anyone willing to listen.
But enough speculation. Regardless of how it started, Aaron’s Periscope was the catalyst that birthed a group of vigilant followers, glued to the edge of their seats as the absurd drama unfolded just a couple of taps of a smartphone away. Aware of the steady influx of followers12 and hooked on the serotonin rush that comes with a flood of affirmative virtual hearts, Carter carried on.
It was through these streams that the public first learned that Aaron was preparing for an epic comeback in the form of a new album – his first since the release of Another Earthquake! in 2002. Eager to prove himself, he stated the following in an interview with Business Insider: “I'm not just an entertainer…I'm a musician, a composer, a conductor. I can orchestrate.”
But, as fate would have it, Aaron would have to put his dreams and aspirations on hold as his tumultuous world flipped upside down once more.
It all started with an altercation in Washington DC, at a charity event for a dying 7-year-old girl.
According to Aaron’s version of events, it was at this particular gig that Carter suspected longtime drummer Pete “Petey” Merriweather of pocketing profits meant to be divided between the performers. During a soundcheck in preparation for the event, Aaron fired Petey for the alleged betrayal. In response, Petey “sucker punched” the singer, knocking him unconscious and breaking his jaw in three places, ultimately warranting a trip to the ER. After re-breaking his jaw back into position and returning to the venue to sing for the little girl13, doctors provided Aaron with a supply of prescription painkillers14. Like millions of other Americans, Aaron then developed an opioid addiction that lingered long after his injury had healed.
The comfortable numbness of the drugs would have been especially appealing in the month of May, when Aaron’s father suddenly passed away. According to sources close to the family, 65-year-old Robert Carter felt a twinge of pain in his chest after working in the hot Florida sun. He then laid down on his bed for a rest he’d never wake up from.
As mentioned previously, Robert was the root of many of his son’s early financial woes, sometimes referring to his youngest child as a “cash cow”. He was described as a “military policeman”15, unafraid of harshly disciplining his children16. Aaron even claimed that in his teens, Robert once pinned him to the ground and shot a .44 Magnum handgun next to his right ear17. But despite having a million reasons to resent his father, Aaron was devastated by the loss. The death in the family triggered the beginning of what can only be described as a tailspin.
Just over a month after Robert was laid to rest, Aaron was arrested for DUI and possession of drugs at an AutoZone in Georgia (he eventually plead no contest and was placed on 12 months probation). In response, older brother Nick tweeted the following message:
To backtrack for just a moment: in the years since House of Carters, Nick’s life had changed dramatically. Around 2008, after a night in Russia fueled by shots of Sambuca, Nick began experiencing shortness of breath and heart palpitations. A trip to the doctor revealed that the Backstreet Boy was suffering from drug-and-alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition.
So, with the support of his bandmates and the Power of Positive Thinking18, Nick Carter was more or less able to cut drugs and alcohol out of his life19. In 2012 he wrote a memoir/self-help hybrid detailing his familial trauma, coping with drugs, and his subsequent journey to sobriety. A few years later, he married a personal trainer named Lauren Kitt, and by 2016 they welcomed a son into the world. Fully metamorphosized from heartthrob to doting dad, Nick was finally in a position where he could both recognize some of his baby brother's struggles and provide some meaningful help.
Sadly, Aaron viewed the brief Tweet as a platitude that allowed Nick to publically play the part of a concerned brother without actually offering real support. “If my own blood (Nick) truly cared about my well-being,” Aaron responded, “why wouldn’t he call me directly and have a conversation instead of making this about him through a very public forum?”
Though dedicated onlookers had no way of knowing at the time, this virtual exchange unofficially marked a rift between Nick and Aaron that would never fully recover. Barely concealed vitriol brimmed from Aaron’s response. At the very least, we know that Aaron harbored an intense resentment over Nick’s absence following their sister’s death in 2012. What’s more, Aaron admitted in a 2017 interview that he viewed his brother’s love as “conditional”. But the bitterness between brothers likely stemmed back much further, to the days when a preteen Aaron was forced to become the family’s breadwinner because Nick stopped bankrolling the lavish lifestyle the family became accustomed to. While Nick probably viewed stepping away from his volatile family as a necessary step in maintaining sobriety and saving himself, Aaron viewed Nick’s decisions as outright rejection and abandonment.
An explosive estrangement was practically bound to happen from the start. However, the perceived insincerity of Nick’s Tweet seems to be the straw that ultimately broke the proverbial camel’s back.
The public feud attracted the scrutiny of onlookers, who used social media as a forum to discuss Aaron’s gaunt appearance and unusual behavior. The spotlight on Aaron grew brighter still less than a month after the arrest, when it was revealed in a letter to fans that he was bisexual. Though many commended Carter for his candidness, the announcement may or may not have20 prompted his then-girlfriend to leave him. As another loved one exited his life, Aaron engaged in a string of teary-eyed interviews – further feeding the trolls that speculated about Aaron’s instability from afar. Armchair theorists on celebrity gossip forums suggested everything from methamphetamine dependency to HIV/AIDS. After years of sharing his phone number online, he began getting hundreds of calls and texts from anonymous pranksters further backing up the baseless claims.
By the fall of 2017, Carter’s extremely public meltdown caught the attention of a daytime talk show titled The Doctors. As a spin-off of Dr. Phil21, the showrunners were eager to cash in on the ongoing trainwreck, and Aaron was eager to use the platform to dispel some of the rumors surrounding him. The climax of the show – a comprehensive drug and STD test – shut down many of the rumors circulating around Aaron’s health. It did, however, reveal that Carter tested positive for marijuana, extended-release opiates, and benzodiazepines. All the while, he remained adamant that the drugs in his system were by no means illicit and that he strictly followed the dosages prescribed by his doctors.
Whether or not he was truly following the doctor’s orders, what we do know is that Aaron ultimately checked himself into rehab by the end of September. Seeking a fresh start for the umpteenth time, he wiped all of his social media histories and essentially disappeared for a few months. By the start of 2018, he had gained 45 lbs and felt “cautiously optimistic” about his future. In February 2018, nearly two years after the release of “Fool’s Gold”, Aaron Carter finally released LØVË through Sony records22.
The album garnered mixed reviews, but what others had to say almost didn’t matter. This was something that was fully Aaron’s. He didn’t just sing the tracks on LØVË. He produced the album, wrote the lyrics, and crafted the beats23. It was total rebellion from the carefully calculated Lou Pearlman productions of Aaron’s early days, formulated with maximum profits in mind even if that meant sacrificing everything that makes music beautiful. Even if the tracks were, as one critic put it, “shallow EDM songs about relationships”, they were his shallow EDM songs about relationships.
To call it a comeback would be inaccurate because “comeback” implies that there was something left for Aaron to come back to. What LØVË marked was something closer to reincarnation – the birth of an entirely new artist fashioned from the ashes of a teenybopper that died decades ago.
For a little while, it seemed as though everything might actually be okay after all. Fresh out of rehab, it seemed as though the music might have been the healthy outlet Aaron needed to overcome his troubled past. He pursued a new relationship with tattoo artist Lina Valentina, and by all accounts, the two very quickly fell in love. Though he continued to frequently livestream primarily via Instagram, it seemed that he was better able to filter through the occasional negative comment. He smiled, laughed, and even asked for fan feedback when sharing his music.
When the facade of newfound normalcy fully disintegrated and Aaron entered the final chaotic chapter of his life is hard to say. But from the outside looking in, it seems that it may have coincided with his participation in a show called Marriage Bootcamp: Reality Stars - Family Edition.
Despite the complicated title, the premise was simple enough. Aaron and his mother, Jane would be locked in a house for ten days alongside three other sets of dysfunctional family members and forced to partake in extreme treatments to get their relationship back on track. If Dr. Phil’s The Doctors was some warped public version of a psychiatric evaluation, you might call Marriage Bootcamp a bastardized version of therapy. One of the exercises supposedly meant to strengthen the broken bond between loved ones involved literally getting attacked by dogs.
Aaron loved to perform, and for whatever reason he could not resist the cold embrace of reality television. Maybe the decision to join the cast was strictly business, a means of drumming up attention following the release of LØVË. The gig certainly offered a sizable paycheck – the appearance fee ultimately took care of the down payment for a house. Perhaps he truly believed that some of the pain that mired the relationship with his mother might actually be solved through the show’s unorthodox methods.
How “real” this reality production was is unknowable. But there was one outcome following the show that’s difficult to refute. Though there’s no saying if it was the show’s doing or something else entirely, following Marriage Bootcamp Aaron and Jane started spending significantly more time together.
We don’t know whether Jane, still trapped in the throes of alcoholism, directly influenced Aaron’s inevitable relapse or simply played the role of a passive bystander as old habits naturally reared their ugly heads. Whether unresolved trauma or the simple siren call of a good time ultimately broke Aaron’s brief streak of success is also something we’ll never know. These are answers that we lost alongside Aaron.
What we do know is this: after Marriage Bootcamp, Aaron did not stay sober. And with that, the stage was set for a supernova that would engulf not only Carter and those in his direct orbit, but fans, followers, and foes from around the globe.
In the next installment: Guns, girls, dogs, drugs,and more (really). CLICK HERE for part three
While there’s no indication that courts actively tried to break up man and dog, it seems that King was rehomed to a close friend of Aaron’s around the time that the Wonderful World Tour launched. All evidence available suggests that King went on to live a full and happy life.
Also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID.
An outdated term for Bipolar Disorder. For what it’s worth, there seems to be an established history of Bipolar Disorder in the Carter family – notably, Aaron and other family members claimed that older sister Leslie struggled with the condition.
This diagnosis should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. For one, Carter revealed this information on a Dr. Phil spin-off talk show titled The Doctors (more on that later). Historically, such sources have been known to provide misleading medical information, and Aaron later insinuated that the show was heavily edited in a way that mischaracterized his diagnosis. During the 2019 episode, hosts expressed skepticism over the accuracy of his diagnosis to the point that neuropsychologist Dr. Judy Ho offered him a comprehensive reevaluation free of charge. Even if the doctors that provided Aaron with his initial diagnosis were acting in good faith, misdiagnoses can happen because of overlapping symptoms between psychiatric conditions. Finally, making an accurate psychiatric diagnosis when drugs are also in play is difficult if not completely impossible.
Assuming that Aaron’s diagnosis was accurate and he did in fact have schizophrenia, onset usually occurs between mid-teens and early thirties. Aaron turned 27 in 2014, putting him right in the center of that onset age range. In addition, throughout his teens and twenties, Aaron reported and exhibited signs of depression, unpredictable mood swings, and impulsivity – all of which are cited as symptoms of the disorders Carter claimed.
I feel that it’s important to make the distinction that drugs weren’t what caused Aaron’s mental illnesses – rather, if Aaron had a predisposition to illness due to his genetics or past traumas, drug use may have increased his chances of developing symptoms. To put it in the form of an analogy, drug use may have pulled the trigger of the gun, but an array of other uncontrollable factors loaded the chamber in the first place. All of Aaron’s flaws aside, insinuating that any mental illness he may have faced was at all “his fault” would be both inaccurate and unfair.
Information on Wonderful World concert setlists comes from setlist.fm, which seems to be working with fairly limited data points. However, 2014-2015 concert fragments archived on Youtube seem to back up the fact that songs like “Recovery”, “He Don’t Know You Like Me”, and “What Would You Do” (which were never officially released) were frequently featured in Aaron’s performances.
Why these songs were never officially released is unclear. Perhaps he still struggled to find a producer willing to work with him, which Carter cited as a problem that plagued him throughout his adulthood. Though it seems that Aaron might have been able to professionally record some of his work from this time period (such as “Ooh Wee” and “Curious”), perhaps finances or busy tour schedules prevented him from getting to the studio to complete the rest.
It’s really bad because Aaron gets it in his head that ranch dressing is a necessary ingredient for macaroni salad (it’s not), only to discover that there’s no preprepared ranch dressing available in the kitchen and that he has no idea what ranch dressing is made of. He attempts to make it with some combination of heavy cream, premade thousand island dressing (why it’s there and not ranch is a mystery), Tobasco sauce, and garlic powder. He then overcooks his pasta, which sort of congeals into a gummy mess. Personally, I really feel bad for Aaron in this instance because it clearly seems that he was cast because of the comic relief his lack of cooking skills provided. This particular show really drives home a recurring theme throughout Carter’s later television career of being mocked, chastised, and/or patronized for his shortcomings for the sake of “good TV”.
More specifically, he was musing about what it would be like to own “the world’s largest dog”. He never ended up getting a Tibetan Mastiff, which is probably for the best since they are notoriously difficult to train.
For better or worse, Aaron close paid attention to every single comment directed at him. A multitude of sources have posthumously attributed Aaron’s inability to shake off negative comments as a massive factor in the deterioration of his mental health, and in old livestreams he frequently paused to read incoming commentary and read aloud the words that resonated with him most.
To be clear, all we have to work with is Aaron’s account, which may or may not be true. If he did indeed pop his jaw back into place, he likely dislocated rather than broke his jaw. That aside, it seems highly unlikely that the doctors at the hospital he was taken to would have allowed him to position the jaw back into place – let alone given a bloodied and bruised Aaron the all-clear to sing a set. However, there’s also no evidence suggesting that this version of events didn’t happen. What we do know with some degree of certainty is that Aaron injured his jaw in 2017 and that he was prescribed painkillers to treat the discomfort.
Remember – although Aaron clearly had an addictive personality and signs were present that AC struggled with substance abuse, only his occasional use of alcohol and marijuana was publically known. His infinitely more concerning issue with inhalants was technically legal, making it an easy habit to conceal from a doctor.
Though it seems he was a veteran, I couldn’t find anything backing up the claim that Robert Carter was affiliated with the police – Robert owned a bar in Western New York and ran a Florida retirement home before focusing full-time on his son’s finances.
From Nick Carter’s memoir: “My dad ruled by intimidation. We never saw physical violence between my parents, but Dad would spank me with a belt in front of the littler kids. I was always the example. He’d pull down my pants and hit me…the extent of the discipline my father doled out on me was wrong”.
As a matter of fact, Aaron had claimed to be deaf in his right ear on multiple occasions because of this incident. However, he also cited removing in-ear monitors during performances as the culprit of his hearing impairment. Regardless of what caused the alleged hearing loss, the story about the gun is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility; Nick claims in his memoir that “dad owned a gun and he’d shoot it out the window sometimes when he got really mad”.
I mean this literally - he cites the works of Norman Vincent Peale (author of the famed self-help book The Power of Positive Thinking) as influential in turning his life around.
Of course, like many people that struggle with substance abuse, Nick has slipped up a few times (for instance, he was arrested in 2016 after a Key West bartender refused to continue serving him). However, for the intents and purposes of this story, Nick started leading a mostly sober lifestyle around 2008 or 2009.
On multiple occasions, Aaron stated that the breakup occurred because she could not understand or accept his sexuality. However, the ex-girlfriend claimed that the announcement had nothing to do with the demise of the relationship.
If you want to get technical, The Doctors is a spin-off of a spin-off; Dr. Phil was initially a spin-off of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
This is a great example of just how muddled the basic facts surrounding Aaron’s life and career truly are. Aaron Carter’s Wikipedia page, citing an archive of Aaron’s official website, claims that LØVË was independently released through his own label called Rakkaus Records (not to be confused with the defunct hip hop label Rawkus Records). The Wikipedia entry for LØVË, however, lists Sony Music as the label. In a November 2022 interview, Carter’s former manager stated, “Aaron is signed to Sony. Aaron is not an independent artist”.
Later down the line, Aaron would be accused by followers and other artists of stealing the beats of lesser know musicians. However, from the information I’ve been able to dig up, these accusations haven’t extended to any of the songs featured on LØVË, specifically.
Wow, this series is so well written and captivating, I'm here for it!
I believe he had an album in 2005. Called Popstar? It was removed from spotify a few years back, I distinctly remember buying it because I loved the single "Saturday Night." Which had played at my 7th grade dance. I could be wrong, I'd have to go back to my mom's house to look for the CD. But I do believe there was an album between Another Earthquake! and Fool's Gold. He would've been in his late teens when it came out.