Nick Carter is back, making it look ‘Easy’
If your beauty routine now consists of eye cream when all you used to need was Lip Smackers, then there’s a chance you had a crush on Nick Carter. Just Google “Who is the most popular Backstreet Boy?” and the search definitively determines it is the youngest of the fiveman band that danced its way into the hearts of tweens and teens in the ’90s. (Sincere apologies to Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell, AJ Mclean and Kevin Richardson. We don’t make the algorithm.)
Perhaps you were even convinced Carter was crooning the group’s earworm love songs – “As Long as You Love Me,” “Quit Playing Games” and “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” – directly to you. And that his affection would result in a trip to the altar, where he, with his blond locks parted in the center, in front of you, in a sparkly Limited Too dress, would proclaim, “I don’t care who you are (who you are), where you’re from (where you’re from), what you did,” he’d cherish you for as long as you both shall live.
In reality, a sad, sad reality (at least “Sadness is beautiful”), only one got to marry Carter (Lauren Kitt in 2014). But the artist, now 42, is giving fans a taste of his life as a husband and dad with his new single, “Easy,” out now.
“I’d been just doing normal, everyday husband and fatherhood duties at home and got inspired to write a song that was about my life,” the father of three (Odin, 5, Saoirse, 2, and Pearl, 1 in April) tells USA TODAY.
“It’s 7:30 in the morning/i smell eggs over easy/in those pajamas that you like girl/lil mama knows how to please me,” he sings in the song featuring country artist Jimmie Allen. “I hear the kids waking up screaming, ‘Mom and Daddy, where you at?’ Downstairs/give her a kiss on the cheek as she winks, said, ‘I’ll see you later on.’ ‘Hell yeah.’ ”
Carter, who released the first of three solo albums in 2002, says “Easy” lyrics were “almost too literal for one of my managers. He’s like, ‘I just don’t know if I could get past the cooking eggs in the morning lyric,’ ” remembers the singer. “And I said, ‘Well, it’s true. It’s what I’ve been doing.’ ”
Allen, whom Carter describes as “one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, one of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met,” wrote the second verse about “feening for more time” with his girl.
Carter is hesitant to describe “Easy” simply as a country song, reasoning, “It has elements of country in it, but it also has elements of R&B.” He’s a fan of genre-mixing songs such as “God, Your Mama, and Me,” the 2016 Florida Georgia Line tune featuring the Backstreet Boys. Carter and his bandmates will resume a pandemic-pushed world tour, beginning June 4 in Chula Vista, California, and wrapping March 2023 in Auckland, New Zealand.
Carter reveals what he attributes the Backstreet Boys’ decadeslong success to, what (little) his kids know of his career, and why an attempted return to his center-part hairstyle ended in “nothin’ but a heartache.”
Question: What do you attribute the longevity of Backstreet Boys to?
Nick Carter: It’s the love of music, the love for each other. Every single one of us in this group, we are a family. We see the same goal and dream and that is to just be entertainers, and honestly, it’s the love of our fans.
In my late teens, I’d go and try to play basketball on the basketball court with friends, and there’d be kids mocking you and singing your songs like, “Backstreet’s back,” “I want it that way.” I just attribute it to the most incredible fans in the world, who are resilient, who don’t care about what anybody else out there says, and love what they love. At that time, I remember it was like, “Oh, this pop, boy band music.” Sometimes it was like you were an outsider. We recognize that our fans are the most incredible people in the world.
Q: What do your kids think of your music?
Carter: My daughter Saoirse, who’s 2, she literally is the one who sings all the time. Her and I will start trading off. I’ll say something – “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” and she’s like, “How I wonder what you are.”