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National Post Article IT'S NOW OR NEVER: Nick Carter describes his new solo album as a "light pop mixture with rock flavour." Nick Carter, the youngest, blondest member of the Backstreet Boys, is dressed like any sloppy university-aged male. Slumped over a table at the ritzy Studio Cafe in Toronto's Four Seasons Hotel, he's wearing a hooded sweatshirt, low-hanging overalls and a diamond stud in his left ear. Perhaps the only remarkable thing about him is the mind-boggling fact that Carter -- a singer and dancer of middling talent at best -- is probably worth more than every guest of the Four Seasons Hotel combined. Despite the band's past success, it's no secret the Backstreet Boys have lost their momentum. Although their publicists insist that another album is in the works, the real problem is out of their hands. The problem is this: by boy band standards, the Backstreet Boys are old. Most of them are married or having children or on their way in or out of rehab. Except for Carter. About a year ago, 22-year-old Carter -- the one whose bowl cut and imploring hand gestures used to drive the tween set wild -- experienced an identity crisis of the sort one would expect of a boy band member reaching maturity. True, he's been all around the world and is richer than God. But, consider his life: he's been with the band since the age of 12, he's never been to a regular school and he's never stayed anywhere long enough to have a real girlfriend. Rarely has he even had the opportunity to venture out in public dressed in an outfit that hasn't been purposefully co-ordinated to match those of four other men. Even at this very moment, six or seven of his "people" are glaring protectively from the next table. "I was going down a wrong path in a way," he says, describing that confusing time in his life. "I was doing the wrong things, hanging out with the wrong people." In January of 2002, perhaps the apex of his troubles, Carter was arrested after a fight broke out at a nightclub in his hometown of Tampa, Fla. "The scenario was very odd," he says. "Some cops were arresting a bunch of people for fighting outside and I had walked out. I was just was there and they were just arresting people. "Carter apparently failed to leave the scene promptly when asked by a police officer and found himself in cuffs. He was reported to have been distraught at the time, and told the police "you just want to arrest a Backstreet Boy." The charges were later dropped. After some soul-searching, he decided the time had come for him to try something new, to strike out on his own for a while. As luck would have it, around the same time, his management approached him about recording a solo album. He immediately recognized it as an opportunity to define himself as separate from the rest of the Boys. "Growing up with these guys, that's all I've known," he says. "A lot of people, when they grow up, they step out of a family and figure out who they are. That's basically what I've been doing. " The resulting album, Now or Never, which he describes as "light pop mixture with rock flavour," is available in stores this week. Carter says he wrote 65% of the album -- but the songs he didn't write, he assures his fans, he hand-picked from a selection culled for him by his A&R people. He only chose songs, he says, if he felt a real personal connection to them. The album's first single, the unfortunately-named Help Me, is a painfully earnest pop-rock ditty about struggling to "figure out right from wrong." (Carter belongs to that school of singing in which closed-eyed whispering is considered a reasonable substitution for genuine emoting.) "I didn't write the song," he says, "but I think it's so cool. If you listen to the lyrics, it's like, 'Help me figure out the difference between right and wrong / weak and strong / day and night / where I belong.' It really just connected with me. It's like, 'This is where I'm at right now.'" He's also coming to grips with romantic relationships, of which he's had very few. (He dated a girl once for a couple of years when he was 16, but that was before the band got big.) His self-penned song My Confession, (which features the line: "I wanna ask you why / but every time I try, you cry") is about being in love with someone who's committed to someone else. Now or Never, he says, is just an experiment, something he felt he had to try. He is still first and foremost a Backstreet Boy. "I ask that people not over-judge the situation," he says. "I want people to be open minded." Whether or not they will be is another question. Unfortunately, rarely has a member of an over-exposed pop group managed to launch a solo career unscathed by naysayers. Alas, it's the curse of belonging to a boy band. Doesn't he hate always being described that way? "I don't hate it," he says. "And after I'm done doing what I'm doing, they probably won't put me in with that no more." Lianne GeorgeNational Post Thanks to NicksMuse. |