a, at the Garden Villa Retirement Home, where the Carter family lived and worked at the time. With two sisters already, who wouldn't be happy to have a new little brother? Nick frequently expressed delight at the addition of the newest members of the family...especially his first (and only) brother! A Performer Extraordinaire according to Top of the Pops magazine, Nick was the first to actually ask Aaron if perhaps he too wanted to sing. Says Aaron, "If Nick wasn't a singer, then I wouldn't be here. He supports me and is the one who asked me if I wanted to sing. I was interested in performing before, but I think it would have been a lot harder." It may not have been as difficult as Aaron suggests, however. Aaron's musical career actually began when he was seven, when he landed the position of lead singer in a band called Dead End. Since then, he set the world record for the most hit songs recorded by a person his age in music history! Aaron and Dead End parted friends after about two years, with Aaron declaring "... they wanted to do alternative music and I wanted to do more pop." From that point forward, he was a solo act, and he began to spend much of his time in vocal training. It wasn't long before Aaron was putting his voice lessons to work. In March of 1997, Aaron performed during a Backstreet Boys' concert in Berlin, Germany, and he stole the show! After the concert, he was offered a record contract on the spot by an Edel Record Company executive who saw him perform, and in the fall of 1997, he released his first single, Crush On You. He followed that with Crazy Little Party Girl, I'm Gonna Miss You Forever, and Shake It, all of which became very popular overseas. After going gold in Norway, Spain, Denmark, Canada, and Germany, Aaron's first full album, Aaron Carter, hit the stores in the US on June 16, 1998, and was a big success. Aaron released another single--Surfin' USA--a remake of the Beach Boys' famous song. He also worked with such musical talents as The Moffatts, Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, Gil Ofarim and others to make a single called Let the Music Heal Your Soul. They called themselves the Bravo All Stars, and donated the time they spent in studio on the single and its proceeds to benefit the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation, an organization that treats disabled and autistic children through the use of a specially designed kind of music therapy.