Aaron Carter, the teen pop idol and younger brother of Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter, has died, The Hollywood Reporter and TMZ report. Carter was found dead in his bathtub in his home in Lancaster, California. He was 34 years old.
Born in 1987 in Tampa, Florida, Carter released his self-titled solo album when he was nine years old and opened for the Backstreet Boys early in his career. His sophomore LP, Aaron’s Party (Come Get It), came out in 2000 and featured hits such as ‘I Want Candy’, ‘That’s How I Beat Shaq’, and the title track. Two more albums, Oh Aaron and Another Earthquake!, arrived in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and he wouldn’t release his fifth and final studio album, Løvë, until 2018.
Carter was occasionally a guest on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, and he also appeared on reality shows such as House of Carters and Dancing With the Stars as well as the Dr. Seuss musical Seussical on Broadway.
As an adult, Carter was open about his struggles with addiction and substance abuse. During a 2019 episode of The Doctors, he said had been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and acute anxiety. Earlier this year, shared he had entered rehab for a fifth time in order to regain custody of his young son, Prince.
In August of this year, Carter told the Daily Mail he was working on a musical comeback. “I realized that I was killing myself and everything was being destroyed around me from it,” he said. “I was lying to the world and myself. Everybody deserves a second chance. I have not committed any crazy crimes… I am not how some people try to paint me. If somebody wants to call me a train wreck, well I’ve been a train that’s been wrecked multiple times and derailed by many different things. But I rebuild, get on the tracks and keep going.”