After dropping a solo EP on Thanksgiving titled hi, my name is Alex, Backstreet Boy AJ McLean is releasing his full-length project, My Name Is Alexander James, on Friday. The release coincides with his birthday, which he sees as a positive sign from the universe.
“This album’s taken me four years to make … and I’m beyond proud of this entire project,” he told ABC Audio. “And the way that everything timing-wise and date-wise is all happening, it was meant to be this way. Like, the fact that my birthday lands on a Friday, I’m like, ‘This is meant to me. This is awesome!'”
The album’s title was inspired by what AJ, who is now sober, learned while enrolled in an intensive outpatient support program aimed at helping him get to the root of his addiction.
“I basically discovered that I suffered from very low self-esteem my whole life. And being in the entertainment world, you can kind of mask that pretty well. And it worked until it didn’t,” he explained. “But I was never able to shut off the AJ persona, on and off stage, which got me into a lot of s***, unfortunately.”
“I’m lucky and grateful I came out the other end and I’m still standing,” he added.
AJ’s EP featured six songs. The album adds another eight, including “Can’t Love You Anymore,” which was co-written with Teddy Swims. AJ says his two daughters gave lots of feedback on the new songs.
“They’re fans of all of daddy’s stuff. And it just fills me up with so much joy [that] every time I picked them up to go to school, [they’d say], ‘Dad, do you have a brand new song? Can you send me some new stuff?'” he said. “And so they’re my, like, strongly opinionated focus group!”
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