Aaron Carter’s manager was taken aback by the embattled entertainer’s frail appearance just two days before he was tragically found dead.
“He looked thin. He was extremely tired,” Taylor Helgeson tells Page Six exclusively.
“He just looked like he needed to be doing anything but working. He looked like he needed to be taking care of him.”
Helgeson, who had been managing Carter for eight months, tells us he met with the “I Want Candy” singer at a music studio the week he passed because they had plans to work on a new album together.
When the Big Umbrella Management exec saw his client’s appearance, however, he became concerned yet confused because it did not appear to match his upbeat demeanor.
“He didn’t he didn’t seem okay,” Helgeson says before explaining, “Now, when I say that, I think it’s really important the kind of context of that.
“He didn’t seem okay physically … [but] mentally, he was the most excited I’ve seen him in months. He was very intelligent and he was very conscious of what people wanted to see from him.”
Hegelson says that Carter’s excitement for his plans for the future makes him rule out any doubt that the “Aaron’s Party” singer had been contemplating suicide whatsoever.
“He was a guy with a lot of plans,” the manager says. “We had so much stuff going on an, you know, Aaron was a really prideful guy in his own right, too. That’s not his style.”
However, it is clear that Carter was struggling to some extent leading up to his death as a recent report claims he was found surrounded by compressed air cans and pill bottles when he died.
The “House of Carter” alum had been open about his addiction issues — particularly with huffing — but an official cause of death is yet to be been determined pending toxicology results.
Helgeson tells Page Six that one of the main points of contention between him and Carter was the musician’s resistance to going to an inpatient rehab program.
“We were proposing [what] would have been … three months in Utah just on detoxing and kind of formulating new physical habits within your body,” the manager says.
“[Carter] was saying, ‘I’m going to get my kid back and then I’m going to do this.’ and I was saying, ‘If you do this, I’m definitely going to get you your kid back,’ and that was the disagreement.”
In September, Carter shared with the public that he had checked himself into an outpatient program in order to try and regain custody of his son Prince, whom he shared with on-again, off-again fiancé, Melanie Martin.
Helgeson says even during some of Carter’s lowest points, his son was always at the forefront of his mind.
The music exec shares that sometime in mid-2022, the “That’s How I Beat Shaq” singer admitted to him that he hadn’t “slept in a couple of days” and was “stressed out.”
After getting some much-needed sleep, though, Carter awoke with good intentions for his son, asking Helgeson to help him create a will.
“I was like, ‘You need a will,’ so I reached out to my publicist at that time, and I had asked her to help with getting the paperwork,” the manager says. “And so we started getting that together and we got the paperwork out and it never got signed. It never got filled out.”
Helgeson says one of the reasons why he and the rest of Carter’s team have pushed back so much on projects that have come out amid the “Fool’s Gold” singer’s death — such as his now-delayed memoir — is because they want to make sure Prince will be taken care of.
“I think a misconception here is Aaron is signed to Sony. Aaron is not an independent artist any and all releases that Aaron does need to be approved by the label period,” the manager explains.
“What matters is that it goes to the correct channels. What matters is that when it goes through the correct channels, we are then able to to be a part of making sure that what comes from that music goes to the right place is by his son.”
Hegelson says he and his team have no plans to promote the work Carter had been working on in the near future.
He concludes, “Right now, we are grieving and we are not interested in projects.”
The post Aaron Carter was in physical decline in days before he died: manager appeared first on Page Six.
