American singer-songwriter and actor Ashley Parker Angel rose to fame in the early aughts as one-fifth of the boy band O-Town, assembled via the 2000 ABC/MTV survival reality show Making the Band. Created by record producer Lou Pearlman (the mastermind behind the boy band craze of the late ‘90s), the show tracked the creation of a pop music group through a rigorous selection process. After being selected as one of O-Town’s five members, Ashley Parker Angel made his official debut on the band’s 2001 platinum-selling eponymous debut, which climbed to Number 5 on the Billboard 200. Following the tepid reception of their second album, 2002’s O2, O-Town parted ways after being dropped by their label J Records in 2003. A year later, the MTV reality show There and Back documented his struggles to abandon his teen pop idol image and establish himself as a mature singer-songwriter. His first solo album, the rock-tinged Soundtrack to Your Life, was released in 2006 to great critical and commercial acclaim, reaching Number 5 on the Billboard 200 and selling nearly 150,000 copies in the US alone. Subsequently, Ashley Parker Angel went on to land a series of roles on Broadway musicals such as Hairspray and Wicked and appeared in a handful of films and TV series. Mansions of Arcadia, his latest musical project with production duo Xandy Barry, unveiled their debut single “Don’t Let Me Down” in 2012.
