AJ McLean thought he was there to talk about music. He wasn’t prepared for this. Mid-conversation on The Jennifer Hudson Show, just as he was opening up about his latest work, the moment shifted without warning. The lights stayed the same. The set didn’t change. But everything else did. His daughters walked out.
AJ McLean‘s daughters stepped into the spotlight in support of their dad’s newest venture.
In an episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show that aired Wednesday, the Backstreet Boys icon was paid a surprise visit from his daughters Elliot, 12, and Lyric, 8, while he was chatting about his recently released solo album, ‘my name is Alexander James.’
“Not fair! Oh my God,” he said when the girls walked out on the set. “You’re supposed to be in school right now!”
McLean, 48, visibly became emotional and said, “I was not ready for this today, this was not on my bingo card at all.”
The album, which was released on his birthday, Jan. 9, took him four years to create, he told Hudson. And the project definitely had the seal of approval from Elliot and Lyric as the two said they were “very” proud of their dad.
While the two girls have mostly stayed out of the public eye, barring various red carpet appearances at movie premieres with their dad over the years, they had a special role in the creation of the album, recording the prologue to introduce McClean with his full name, Alexander James, and not the initials he’s always gone by as a boy band member.
“We started to really, really feel that 1999 nostalgia.”
Kayla Aldecoa
“I asked them if they would do it, and immediately after they recorded it, they wanted me to hear it and I said, ‘No, I don’t want to hear it until the album is actually released,’” he recalled. “So we had a listening party in New York and that was my first time hearing it in front of fans, I bawled like a baby because I didn’t know what to expect…it was very genuine, I couldn’t think of any better way to start the album, honestly.”
McLean shares Elliot and Lyric with ex-wife Rochelle who he was married to from 2011 to 2024. In a November interview with Us Weekly, the singer shared that the two are “not fully back together, but we are, hands-down, the best we’ve ever been.”
