Jesse McCartney may be known for his roles in short-lived television series, television guest appearances and a few animated cartoons in which he voiced one of the characters; but he is primarily a pop music icon. Though his parents have been Ginger and Scott McCartney who are both in the acting field, Jesse's singing career has been more successful than his acting stints. He was born in 1987 in New York and was raised in a small part of Westchester. He started pursuing acting at the age of 7 as encouraged by his parents by participating in theatre productions in their community. As a matter of fact, most of these productions are led by his parents through their own production company.

These small acting stints were only intended as stepping stones to a greater success in the field of acting as Jesse auditioned for the role of the young boy in the highly acclaimed horror movie, The Sixth Sense. Unfortunately, Jesse failed to get the role. This failure at the beginning did not affect his desire to continue with his acting career as he auditioned for a role in All My Children, a soap produced by ABC where he played the role of Adam Chandler Jr. Playing this role got Jesse a Daytime Emmy Nomination and led him to grab the lead role in Summerland for WB that aired during the evenings. This may have been the key to Jesse's success if it did not get axed by the network. The show worked well with the fans for the first season that made it go on with the second but as the story progressed, the fans lost interest and soon the ratings became so low that it was impossible for it to continue airing.

Instead of being disheartened by the seemingly failure of his first primetime show, Jesse McCartney instead decided to take a leap to the music industry. In the year 2000, he was able to be a part of the band Dream Street. This only proved that the young Jesse really has what it takes to be a pop music icon as he triumphed to be the youngest member of the band, shamelessly showing that he is better than the other 2,000 young talented boys who auditioned to become a member of the band.

The band was extremely successful in the field of singing but Jesse decided that he could make it better on his own. In the year 2004, just before his television series ended, he released his first solo album. Beautiful Soul was able to top the charts and give Jesse hit singles that increased his popularity even more. He then released his second solo album but its sales did not go up as expected. As compared to his first solo album, his second had been a disappointment. This made Jesse McCartney even more determined to really make it big in the music industry. Following his failed attempt to repeat his first album success, he released his third solo album, “Departure”, which now includes the chart-topping song, “Leaving”.