Interview: NICK CARTER takes on comics, AI, and LOVE LIFE TRAGEDY

Backstreet Boys‘ Nick Carter gets personal on his new solo album, Love Life Tragedy, which released this week and is already currently #1 on the Worldwide Albums Chart on iTunes. The new project is described as “his most honest and creatively ambitious work to date” and will dive deep into the personal (yet very public) turmoil the singer has dealt with in recent years. 

Carter chatted with The Beat about the new project, his love of comics, and so much more. 

 

DEANNA DESTITO: Let’s talk about this project. Can you tell me a little bit about it?

NICK CARTER: I’ve been working on this album for, God, almost three years now. I started writing music, solo wise, just on and off, if ever I was feeling a certain way or feeling like I was motivated or feeling inspired. I kept writing more and more. I was learning more about myself, learning more about how much music meant to me, even just from a writer’s standpoint, even as a way to kind of say the things I can’t necessarily say or I don’t know how to say. It’s best written in a song. I put out some [albums] in the past, and they were good but never as important as this one.

I am very eclectic when it comes to the kind of music I write. I love music in general. I just love all types of music. I can’t just be put in a box. I would write some country songs or some country urban songs or maybe some pop songs or some eighties inspired songs or just straight up R&B songs.

I then thought of this album title, the Love Life Tragedy, because that’s the kind of songs I had. I have some love songs from past relationships or love songs of what I’m going through now and my relationship with my wife and the love for my kids and, you know, just love.

And then obviously life. Everybody on this planet, the older you get, the more you live, the more you go through the ups and downs, the more struggle you have. And then that’s just life. That, and then obviously we all experience tragedy as we get older and I’m no stranger to that, just like everybody else on this planet.

DESTITO: Did you find that when you were working on these songs and this album, you were able to use some of your heartbreak, your private struggles? Was this how you expressed your grief or frustration for what you have been going through?

CARTER:  Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s the one blessing with a song and as an entertainer or even just a musician or a writer, is that if you are feeling it and you don’t know how to express that feeling sometimes you could do that in a song. That was the intention that I put into this album, which is why I waited, which is why I hesitated. I didn’t wanna put this out. I just wasn’t ready. I didn’t think I had the full body of work. I didn’t know if I even had the story together, you know?

Music has been been my safe place my whole life. A lot of people don’t realize, I started in this industry when I was 12, that’s when I met the Backstreet Boys. A lot of my youth was sacrificed. I didn’t go to school, I didn’t graduate high school. I didn’t get to do the normal things everybody else did because I was essentially the provider for my family. That was a big responsibility that was kind of thrust onto me, and I just didn’t get to have a childhood really. So I talk about some of those things, like one of the songs, “Hey, Kid,” came along, which was me talking to my younger self saying that, “Hey, you know, everything’s gonna be okay.”

I’m very well aware that I’m definitely blessed and I’m very grateful for what I have now. There’s no woe is me necessarily, but as a human, if you took all of this away, this life that I’ve been given…people don’t realize I didn’t necessarily want this life. It was kind of just thrown in my lap. I just love to sing. I love to perform, but I didn’t necessarily want this life, and it just happened to be my life, and I’m trying to make the best of it.

And I’m grateful for what I do have because I have the knowledge and I have the experience. I have three beautiful children who I’m trying to raise and give them a normal life, whether that’s baseball, whether that’s just school, whether that is just homework or sports or whatever it is or watching a movie with them and making sure that they get to have all those things that I didn’t. 

DESTITO: Let’s talk about the approach creatively with the graphic novel inspired videos that you’re putting out.

CARTER: Well, first and foremost, I grew up collecting comic books. I still am a reader and a collector and when I was around 21, I was able to work with Stan Lee on this comic for the Backstreet Boys that we had, that me and Stan Lee actually wrote together called Backstreet Project.

I just love graphic novels and comics and all those types of things. When I get a chance, I’ll be going to comic cons all across the country because I just want to go and walk around and see the costumes and see the kiosks with the different comic books that are there.

I thought it was a good idea to maybe do a little something paired up with the music that’s on this record. So we took six specific songs that could tell sort of an alternate story, not really directly, but indirectly or metaphorically.

And also too, a lot of times what we do as artists nowadays is we do these lyric videos, and they tend to be pretty boring. So we thought, oh, this would be an even more exciting way to tell the story and give it some picture. Each individual song is a part of the comic book or the series. And so each song tells a different story of this character that kind of ebbs and flows through the ups and downs of his life.

DESTITO: What artists did you work with?

CARTER: I outsourced it and we were able to use AI for it, but it was a company that was able to help me make that come to life. And we actually used them for the “Hey Kid” music video that we did or the lyric video, and we went back to them again and said, Hey, what do you think about this idea?

Obviously AI is really, really starting to take shape and it’s pretty interesting how that work is working now. It’s very controversial–look, don’t get me wrong, I’m a painter and a writer, but you know, there are a lot of people who embrace it, and there are some people who don’t, you know? And I think that’s life. You have to evolve. You either find a way to use it, but don’t overuse it, if that makes sense. 

DESTITO: I think there can be a place for it, if we use it wisely. I mean, I think we’ve all seen Terminator and letting the machines take over completely.

CARTER: Yeah, exactly.

DESTITO: Have you ever considered making it into an actual graphic novel?

CARTER: That’s what I wanna do. I wanna put it in an actual paperback. We also had this idea of maybe doing like a vinyl with it. So it’s like this integration of music. 

DESTITO: Clearly you’re known for Backstreet Boys. How would you sell this to somebody who is not necessarily a fan of pop music or might pigeonhole you into this corner of boy bands?

CARTER: I guess the one way I can describe it is we as entertainers, we’re no different than everybody else out there, you know? Everybody has struggles in this world. One of the things I definitely have had, my own personal tragedy with, has been the loss of a lot of my siblings and my family to addiction and mental health problems. And I’m noticing that there’s a lot of that out there.

One of the things as a comic book reader, as somebody who is, I like to call myself a nerd, ’cause I’m pretty nerdy, is that we nerds, we sometimes go in within ourselves. We just wanna stay in our box mentally, and sometimes it’s hard to get outta that box, you know? So we read these comics, these books, and because it takes us to another place. It’s not just about entertainment, it’s about freeing our minds.

Even though I’m a pop singer, music has done the same thing for me as reading a comic book has for me. So maybe that could do the same for anybody who wants to take a listen to this music because this is not pop music that I’m necessarily writing. This is songs from a deep place.

DESTITO: Favorite hero?

CARTER: It was probably Superman. I wrote a song called “Superman,” and the premise of the song was that I’m nobody’s superhero, but I can try to be a Superman. I could try to do the best that I can with whatever I have been given. That has been a gift and I’m blessed and grateful for that gift. But at the same time, Superman always just wanted to be normal. He just wanted to be Clark Kent. He just wanted to blend in with everybody and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do my whole life.

I’m not saying at all that I’m Superman. I’m just saying that I’d rather just be Clark Kent. If all of this was taken away from me, if I lost everything, as long as I had my kids and as long as I had my family and just be normal, I would be, and that’s how I am.

Watch the first full video for Carter’s new project here!