Navigating Faith, Fear, and Finding Your Voice with Baylee Littrell
Words by Angelina Singer
“So Be It” single cover
It’s not every day that you cross paths with pop royalty — and Baylee Littrell quite literally grew up around it. He’s the only son of Backstreet Boys member Brian Littrell, and while it might be easy to say he’s got some big shoes to fill, he’s actually been working hard to navigate his own path in the music industry. Baylee has wanted to do country music, and while he’s written and performed some of that, he (begrudgingly) found that pop music was his forte after all.
I got to talk with him in the wake of his latest release — “So Be It” — a sultry pop anthem about what it’s like to take the pressure off a relationship and just enjoy the high of getting to know someone new. But first, I wanted to know what it was really like growing up in such a unique situation.
“I never thought [it] as that growing up. To me, he [Brian Littrell] was Dad. And his job was completely normal. It didn’t hit me probably until I was in late elementary school, early middle school, that my dad had a very interesting job, that wasn’t like any of my friend’s dads. I guess it was around then, that I was like, ‘oh my gosh, my dad is a big deal’. It was the funniest thing — it was in a CVS. There was this huge bin of CDs. I looked at them, and I was like, ‘Is that your face on this CD? Is this you?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, we have like 40 of these at the house.’ And I was like, ‘But this is you!’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’”
Then Baylee remembers asking if he could buy one, and his dad said “no” because they already had a bunch at their house. This honestly sounds like the celebrity version of “no, we have food at home” — but at a much larger scale of surrealism. Regardless, Baylee is so humble, and down-to-earth.
Our conversation continued with a quick glance at some of his work on Broadway as a kid on the show Disaster.
“I guess Disaster was really my first big break in remotely any facet of the entertainment industry. I had acted pretty much my whole life, back and forth between taking auditions in New York and L.A. Really started in trying to follow in my mom’s footsteps, because she was an actress for years. So I would dabble in a little bit of modeling stuff and I would try acting…”
Baylee mentioned that before this audition, he didn’t have a lot going on, and he had considered just going back to school and focusing on that. But he heard about this benefit show and he went for it – the first gig he had ever booked at 12 years old. And soon, it even went to Off-Broadway, and then Broadway (even though they had to re-audition, it was a cool experience).
“It took a very grueling two-months-plus process to see what was going to happen with the casting. There’s nothing like being a fresh 13-year-old kid, and you’re getting a callback in New York, which you’ve done a million times, and never succeeded. And you’re in front of your entire cast and they’re just watching you. And some people that were on stage with you made it, and some didn’t.”
Despite it being a stressful process, Baylee got the role [of twins Ben and Lisa] and found out right before Christmas, and his parents moved to New York to make it happen — and he played 72 shows, only missing one performance. While he admits he learned a lot from the experience and thought it was incredibly valuable, he still admitted that he wanted to do music. So instead of pursuing more Broadway roles, he went back to high school and looked towards music instead.
“I waited for my voice to not be in the pubescent-cracking stage,’ Bailey explains. “It was really tough. You wanna just hit the ground running and then you’re like, ‘Wait, I’m 13. I’ve got a lot of time to try and work this out.’”
And then of course, a slightly-expected and yet, unexpected, challenge — Baylee knew that he wanted to differentiate himself as much as he could from his dad’s fanbase. “I tried to kind of escape my dad’s lane of music and go country. And I started that around 15. And I think both my parents knew that that wasn’t really gonna fit how I thought it was gonna work out. But they let me just do my own thing and try. And I found out it actually became more of a monopolization of the family name, and harder to succeed in Nashville.”
His dad thought maybe changing locales would help, freshening up the audience and embracing the creative energy of a new space. But Baylee would soon find out that it’s very hard to escape the expectations and ideas that are so closely intertwined with his own last name. “I’ll never forget, my dad just looked at me, and was like, ‘Uh-oh’.”
“People always say, especially in the last two years, post-American Idol, ‘How was it in Nashville? Why didn’t you just get a record deal instead of doing that [the competition show]?’ Because I couldn’t. I mean, I went into that town and everyone was like, ‘So you’re the Backstreet Boy’s kid… all right, have a good day.’’
Baylee Litrell by Moritz Högemann
In the recording of our chat, I was genuinely surprised by this — especially with the way the media portrays nepo babies, and all of the Hollywood politics that come along with having a famous parent. But not only does Baylee want to earn fame himself, he wants to do it on his terms. Despite not using his father’s fame to his advantage at all, it actually became one of his biggest obstacles to success — a side effect I wouldn’t have expected. Plus, everyone expected him to follow in his dad’s footsteps into the pop genre, even though he really wanted to make country music.
“I was about to give up after… six years, going back and forth from Nashville recording, playing gigs. I did get to tour with my dad, and that was incredible — playing arenas across the U.S. and Canada. Amazing experience. But I finally hit this point where I was about to give up, and my mom was like, ‘You know, American Idol’s been reaching out to us through emails. I’m sure you’ve had some DM’s and emails.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, but I just, I don’t think so.’”
Luckily, his mom was able to talk him into taking on the competition show, because it undoubtedly was the next step in his career that he needed. “She was like, ‘I know where you’re standing right now, and how you’re feeling. If you wanna give this a shot, this could be a huge break for you if it works.’ Baylee was concerned about the unknown components of such an undertaking, but obviously, went for it anyway, choosing not to focus on the what-ifs.
“I expected to honestly not get through the first audition,” Baylee explains, shocking me yet again. “I just didn’t have any belief in myself at that point. I was kinda back to square one, where I’d been turned down by so many people and been in situations where I thought, ‘Okay, you’re just not good enough, you can’t do it. To the point where I went into that audition with a little bit of confidence, but basically I was basing this off of, if I didn’t get through, or however long I make it on the show, that’s my run with music. Then I’ll be done. This is my last effort to try.”
I honestly had no idea that someone in Baylee’s shoes would struggle with self-worth, and I really appreciated his honesty. At the end of the day, this conversation is proof that we’re all human no matter how famous our parents are, and it’s important not to focus on the destination so much that you lose sight of the journey.
“When it came time to leave [American Idol], and I was eliminated, I was like, ‘Dude, you actually started to figure out who you were for a second. And then you stopped, and you got scared again. And you were tired, you just didn’t push through.’ And you know, a lot of people at Idol kinda wanted me to go toward pop and more of the R&B crowd. And I was like, ‘That’s not me. I like country music, and I like this and that.’ [And they said] ‘But we don’t think that that’s you.’”
As it turns out, the judges and producers were right about Baylee, that maybe genetics go deeper and hold our creative pursuits tighter than we ever realized, because the pop direction was exactly who he was – no matter how much he tried to fight it.
“So I released ‘Hey Jesus’, the song that I sing on the show, and that was the first step of honestly being super personable with people in my journey. So when I got that vulnerable, I was like, ‘Okay, if you can be this vulnerable with people, you can be vulnerable with your music influences, your style, your suggestions, and experiment. So then came the time to switch genres.”
One thing that I noticed about Baylee, is that he’s obviously got so much experience interviewing, because he wove his story together so beautifully — often answering my intentional and curated questions many times before I even had the chance to ask them. It’s impressive, and I found this made for a smooth yet in-depth chat that lended itself very well to the written words in this article – even if I was often at a loss of words for what to respond with. Long story short, now he’s feeling excited about making the jump to pop music — but he’s still going to find a way to make it his own.
From here, I shared with Baylee that I’m also a person of faith, so “Hey Jesus” really resonated with me (as I’m sure it did many others), and I wanted to hear about how his upbringing and faith played into writing this song.
“My faith has always played a huge role in my life, from a very young age. But when it came to writing in music, it was something I tried to stay away from. I was kinda scared of it, or scared of writing. Finally, I had just lost my grandmother and that was kind of like the big time when you question morality, and faith, and I was just at this point where I was realizing how mortal we really are. So the fear of death sunk in for the first time. It kind of made me go into survival mode and push out religion for a little bit. But I had this moment where I was writing different types of music — again, this is around the time country [music] was starting to get confusing, and I swayed from being in the Nashville scene.”
At this point, it was clear that this was the culmination of Baylee trying to find his style, as well as redefine what his faith meant to him. This next part of our conversation will give you chills, because I know it affected me deeply when I heard him talk about it.
“I was writing this song [‘Hey Jesus’] in my room one day, and I just had this feeling of like, a presence. I was sitting there, trying to write a song, and I just hear, ‘Why don’t you write one for me?’ And it was like, ‘Write one for who? What?’ It was the greatest thing, but I feel like when people of faith are spoken to – or just anyone in general – sometimes it changes someone’s entire perspective. And you’d know, it’s a feeling that comes from your inner mind, but how does God communicate with us? It’s through our minds. It’s through visions, it’s through different things, and symbolisms. So I felt this thought was almost not of mine, and so strong, that I had to listen to it. And I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve never done this before, but we’re gonna try it.’ And it was that feeling of fear, and respect, and joy, and love all at the same time.”
Baylee continued to explain that this song came together faster than other songs he had written. And he didn’t really think much of it, until his parents heard him play it and absolutely loved it. His mom wanted him to release it, but he didn’t until American Idol prompted him to share it during the second round. “Be honest, be honest with the world. This is your moment, and this is the stage for you to really proclaim your faith but also just be vulnerable with people,” she said. That’s when he realized that he had stumbled onto something really special, because Baylee admitted this song was one of his best moments on the show.
When it was time for him to take the stage, he was running on limited sleep, too much caffeine, and very little advance notice of when it was his turn to play. But all of that dissipated, just moments before. Coincidence, or something more at play here?
“You don’t know when your name’s going to be called, it’s at random. So we’re all just sitting there, everyone had espresso in the morning, we’re all shaking. And we’re all just waiting for our moment… and I was terrified walking up there. And they handed me my guitar and they said you’ve got literally three seconds, check your sound, check your guitar levels, and we’re going. And I’m standing there, and my hands are trembling on my guitar, then I felt the calm again. And it was one of those moments, like, that’s where I find my strength. So my hands kind of settled, and I watched them settle. But I was like, ‘Okay, this doesn’t mean I’m not terrified. But this means this is gonna be easier.’ It was a fantastic moment in my life.”
It was then that Baylee realized that he couldn’t stop making music, and he needed to be vulnerable the whole time he was doing it. A big “life lesson, discovery moment”, as he put it. And the music he was making next, was perhaps the more secular-styled “So Be It”, but what I gathered from all this context, is that both songs are two sides of the same coin. Baylee explained that while “Hey Jesus” showed his raw grappling with faith in the wake of loss, “So Be It” is a much lighter party anthem that showcases what it feels like to come up against distractions in the world. You can’t have one without the other, and I applauded his ability to manage both styles at such a high level of maturity and musical talent.
“It’s [‘So Be It’] definitely geared towards the pop, R&B, type of secular world music now. I think one thing I’ll never do is stop doing Christian projects. That’ll always be something that happens. But I got to this point, where we’re imperfect humans, so I can also be vulnerable with people and just talk about my basic life temptations or what we go through. So after the vulnerability with ‘Hey Jesus’, I finally had the guts to produce and compose.”
This is the part of the interview where Baylee talked about how he naturally started straying from the typical process of picking up his guitar to write — suddenly, he found himself producing new tracks digitally, exploring what that could do for him creatively. And the weirdest part of it all that threw him for a loop, was that he actually enjoyed it, despite (or maybe, alongside) his passion for country music. His parents loved it, and his mom even said “welcome to the pop world” – perhaps a slight tongue-in-cheek moment of “I told you so,” right in the middle of the creative detour that Baylee never planned on taking.
“‘So Be It’ wasn’t the first pop song I’d written by far, but it was the first step of differentiating the genre, the subgenre, and really finding where that direction was gonna go. I knew I was gonna go pop by that point, but I didn’t know if it was gonna be alternative pop, or pop rock, or R&B influenced, or what it was going to be. So that song kind of became, and will be, the middle ground of this upcoming record. So you’ll have the variety, but it really did change everything.”
As we got towards the end of our chat, I wanted to hear about his writing process, genres aside. Did he start with lyrics, or a melody, or a combination of both?
“I usually hear a melody in my head first, before anything. And it’ll just replay until I jot it down. And then, record a voice memo of myself walking through the house humming something. And then, sometimes it’s lyrics [that] come immediately with the melody, and it’s with the melody, and sometimes it’s just the melody. And it’s weird, it’s a very unconventional process, so I can’t ever say how it honestly starts, because sometimes I’ll just hear something in my head immediately and it’s almost as if it’s completely composed.”
He also mentioned that his notes aren’t the most organized, but he prefers to take notes in actual notebooks, because apparently digital data storage software can’t always be trusted not to glitch and lose it all. But Baylee used to be able to read sheet music and play the piano, even if those skills are “long gone,” as he laments now.
Finally, I asked what fans can expect from him in the next five years. Despite his relatively young age, he speaks and tells stories as if he’s lived decades longer than he actually has.
“The next five years I think the dream would be to hopefully be playing amphitheaters — that would be my end goal. I would say, even clubs — I would take that. As long as I could sell out all the way from front of stage to the doors, I would love that. That would be my dream. I’ll say sell out clubs, and get a club tour across the U.S., that’s how I would honestly love to make my living, is being able to tour. Being with your listeners on a constant basis, there’s nothing more rewarding than that… maybe having two albums out, still in pop!”
Baylee admitted that he’s definitely succumbed to the pop side. He never could quite find the right mix of pop and country — which is why he’s more or less refocused mostly on pop and feeling peaceful about that, overall.
“With pop now, honestly, it was something I was really reluctant [with]… at first. And then I realized how much I loved it, and how much freer I was in my music. Making that jump, I was looking at country like ‘Okay, that was a great time of learning and experience but I won’t go back,’ and it’s just one of those things where now, I think the writing process is so much more fun. You can write more songs, you’re not worried about what lyrically you have to fit in there – if it’s neon, beer, trucks. You can do whatever you want. And so I think that’s really the fun part, and now it’s me really being honest with people. I’m not trying to write to fit a mold; I’m just writing to fit my own mold.”
He jokes that he’s going to go through so many phases within the pop genre, and he’s excited for what he’s going to learn in the creative process next. And yes, he does sometimes enjoy creative writing sessions from time to time with his superstar dad — even though Baylee is more than capable of writing awesome music on his own (minus any fatherly backseat songwriting) that will touch the hearts of anyone who listens.
Get to know pop artist Baylee Littrell and his thoughtful music on Spotify here!