Tyler Hilton was born to be the King, and not just because he shares a regal name with the club-hopping hotel-chain heiresses (no relation, though he and Paris do party together these days).
The 21-year-old singer/songwriter with cover-boy looks and raspy voice was reared on a steady diet of Elvis, which helped him land the part of the young, pre-Vegas-bloat Presley in the upcoming Johnny Cash biopic, "Walk the Line."
"I was just going in to audition to be a backup musician in Johnny Cash's band in the movie, which I totally would have dug," said Hilton of his initial plans for the film which stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Man in Black. "I played 'Long Black Veil,' and they asked me if I knew any Elvis songs. I said, 'Hell yeah!' and they invited me back to read some of Elvis' lines."
Sounds like serendipity, considering the first song Hilton learned on guitar was "Hound Dog," and that by seventh grade he had memorized every page of the Elvis songbook his dad bought him as a toddler.
Listening to the rustic pop on Hilton's major-label debut, The Tracks Of, it's no surprise that the singer admits to missing out on much of the pop music of his youth. "I listened to a lot of oldies radio," Hilton said, citing acts such as Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Beach Boys over such strange (to him) fare as Salt-N-Pepa and New Kids on the Block. "Not to try and be retro, or be uncool in a cool way. I was just uncool."
Hilton, who also appears in an about-to-conclude nine-episode arc as a record-store manager on the TV show "One Tree Hill," is used to being uncool. The self-described drama geek at his Palm Springs, California, high school got his first paying gig as a teen playing for an empty house at a local ice cream shop called Broadway Joy's. His payment? That day's leftover sandwiches.
"I'm sure so many guys on the covers of teen mags were theater dorks in high school," he said. "I was a star of a lot of the plays, which is kind of the opposite of being the quarterback of the football team. You're really putting yourself out there as the head theater geek."
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At the time, Hilton's mom encouraged him to have something to fall back on in case acting didn't work out. That something was music, and Hilton's teachers indulged his hobby by allowing him to cut out in the middle of class, if necessary, to work out a new song on the school theater's piano.
A number of those songs ended up on The Tracks Of, which puts him on equal footing with such sensitive-singer contemporaries as Gavin DeGraw, Jesse McCartney and Howie Day. "We had a really good theater program at my high school and I loved it because I would come home every night after these long theater sessions and I would write songs. There was so much sexual energy on the set that it was great material to write songs with," said Hilton, whose original plan was to act, and use his music as a creative pressure valve.
Instead, he channeled that sexual and creative tension into songs like the album's first single, "When It Comes," an autobiographical snapshot of the artist as a young man. "A lot of my songs are completely honest and mostly very literal, even though they seem abstract," Hilton said of the mid-tempo track, which smoothly mixes mechanical-sounding drumbeats with acoustic and electric guitars.
Hilton's lyrics about hitting the road ("So I wait for fate to find me/ A ball of string unwind me/ Uncomfortable as a centerfold") and searching for his place in the world of course contain a fleeting reference to his musical mentor ("I'll comb my hair like Elvis"). The hummable, radio-ready pop track was produced by former punk mainstay Geza X (Dead Kennedys, the Germs), though Hilton sheepishly admits he's more familiar with X's recent work with Meredith Brooks than his pioneering punk production.
But whether he's talking about his "hooptie" (the same 1965 ride he's had since high school) or an old-fashioned love song about the letter he wrote to win his then-girlfriend back ("The Letter Song"), Hilton's tunes come across as breezy nods to a simpler time. "I was trying to get back on speaking terms with my girlfriend and I decided to mail her a letter, which was a throwback to the old black-and-white films we both loved," Hilton said. "I was so excited, the same night I wrote the letter I started writing the song and speaking to her with my guitar. I played the song at an open mic and she really dug it."
And, in case you were wondering, it worked and he got her back.
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