Jesse McCartney recalls hearing ‘Beautiful Soul’ on radio for the first time

Jesse McCartney, who released his hit single Beautiful Soul 20 years ago, shared how he was not feeling great about the future back then.

“I was coming out of the SAT exam [my] senior year of high school and feeling really down because I knew I had just bombed the math [section],” McCartney, 37, recalled to Us Weekly.

“I was terrible at math and science, just wasn’t my forte. And I was like, ‘Oh, my parents are going to kill me.’”

However, when the young McCartney got into his car, his spirits were immediately lifted by a pleasant surprise on the radio.

“I had just released the song and I get in my car, I was driving a Jeep. I turn on the radio and Beautiful Soul is on Z100 on Elvis Duran and the Z Morning Zoo, my childhood radio station,” he shared. “And I just remember at that moment thinking, ‘I don’t care what happened [on] my SAT exam, my song’s on the radio, I made it.’”

The 2004 love song, which was the lead single of McCartney’s debut album, reached number one in Australia and No. 16 in the United States.

The All’s Well singer reflected that it “feels like it was yesterday that I recorded that song, but then I look at some of the photos … and I can’t believe it’s been that long.”

He continued, “That song has stood the test of time. It’s crossed over into a new generation of pop listeners, and it’s rare in pop music for a song to have legs for that long. So, [I’m] very, very grateful for it.”