EXCLUSIVENick Carter Admits His New Album 'Love Life Tragedy' Was 'Therapeutic' for Him to Make After Going Through 'Ups and Downs': 'This Was More Personal'
Nick Carter exclusively tells OK! that his new album, 'Love Life Tragedy,' was 'therapeutic' for him to make.
May 15 2025, Published 9:11 a.m. ET
Nick Carter is ready to bare his soul.
The singer, whose new album, Love Life Tragedy, which releases on May 15, says making music this time around "felt different" for him.
Nick Carter said writing his new album felt 'cathartic' and 'therapeutic.'
"But also cathartic and therapeutic for me because I really concentrated on getting the songs written, making sure that they made sense to me and they were right," the "Superman" artist, 45, exclusively tells OK!. "Not just sonically — but also within the story as well. I needed it to feel right. I was very hyper-focused on if a song wasn't good or if I didn't think it was right. I would go back in the studio and completely redo hooks and verses and choruses and change songs. There was one song I changed three different times — and that actually turned out to be my favorite song on the record, which is 'Wild Heart.' If it didn't feel right, I waited, which is why it took so long."
The new album releases on May 15.
Since Carter was so inspired, he even changed the name from Who I Am to this new title. "When I was first recording this music over three years ago, at the very last minute, I was able to come up with the title and it just made a lot of sense," he notes. "I was trying to find a way to take all this music that I had recorded and written during a personal time — and I couldn't get around the idea that the title didn't package everything. I finally came up with Love Life Tragedy, and it made sense to me, and I was able to put everything in there."
"Love Life Tragedy is what it says. There are songs of love, there are songs of life and there are songs of tragedy, and it seems to happen to not just me, but anybody in life. The older you get, the longer you live, the more these things happen to you," the performer, who lost his younger brother, Aaron Carter, in 2022 and his two sisters Leslie Carter in 2012 and Bobbie Jean Carter in 2023, adds. "That is just life. You experience love, life and tragedy — and that's what these songs are stories of."
Nick Carter shares three kids with his wife, Lauren Kitt.
After reflecting for so many years, Nick says he can't "choose" just one song since he's experienced so any "ups and downs" throughout the years. "From the loss of my siblings, to things I've been personally going through in my life ... whenever I could write a song, it would be at a moment in time I was either suffering or feeling something that I couldn't say," he shares. "That's why the music was very therapeutic for me in that way. I love 'Hey Kid' a lot because that is me talking to my younger self and telling them, 'Everything will be OK, no matter what.' That was a very personal song to me."
For Nick, music is an "escape" from real life, which is why he hopes people relate to what he has to say in "some way, shape or form."
"Just because I'm an entertainer, I am still a human being and I go through the same things that everybody else goes through out there — loss and all of those things," Nick, who shares three kids with wife Lauren Kitt, says. "Hopefully maybe one or two of these songs can help them in times of need and pain."
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"To put a song out there and let it play and just listen to it in your car is so helpful. I felt this was a long time coming for me where I had this idea to write music — but being in the Backstreet Boys for 30 plus years, music took a different meaning for me personally," he adds. "As a songwriter and person who loves music, it was just meant to be that the Love Life Tragedy album would be completed and ready to go. I feel each song I wrote at the time means so much to me. This was more personal. There were times I was afraid to put it out or felt like I didn't have enough songs or the story wasn't complete yet, but then I was like, 'It's time.'"
Nick Carter hopes his songs help others through good and bad times.
Additionally, Nick, who is performing with the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere in Las Vegas this summer, will be releasing a six-episode comic book-themed music video series over the course of two weeks, which will tell an over arching story inspired by Love Life Tragedy.
"I'm a big fan of comics," he says. "I wrote a comic with Stan Lee years with the Backstreet Boys called the 'Backstreet Project,' and it was a one-off. I've always read comics, and I've always loved comics, comic book movies and comic book characters. It was an idea that I came up with because I thought I could blend two worlds that I love — music and comics. For the six episodes, we handpicked songs that could tell an alternate universe story."
Nick is a co-writer on the album, which was created in collaboration with producers Stuart Crichto and Let Mii Rok Out (Vic "BillboardKiller" Martin, Vinny Venditto, Abraham Poythress), as well as producers and co-writers Bryan Shackle and Beck Nebel.
The Backstreet Boys will be performing in Las Vegas this summer.
Love Life Tragedy releases on May 15.
