Like many poster kids of his generation, Carter’s career came with a dark side – the extent of which was scarcely known until the relatively recent reckoning around how we treat those in the public eye – particularly teenagers caught up in the mainstream US entertainment landscape.
Carter’s departure from the music industry came around 2002, when his parents filed a lawsuit against his former manager Lou Pearlman, the late,
disgraced pop mogul behind multiple boyband juggernauts including Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync. The lawsuit alleged that Pearlman had failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties on Carter’s debut album, which was released through Pearlman’s label and production company, Trans Continental. In separate suits, Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync both asked to be released from their contracts. Carter’s lawsuit was settled out of court, but his legal troubles would continue when Trans Continental filed a lawsuit against him in 2006, claiming that he reneged on a recording deal outlined in contracts he signed when he was a minor. (Following an FBI investigation years later, Pearlman pleaded guilty to conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2008, and died in federal custody in 2016.)