Ashley Parker Angel

Ashley Parker Angel is an American musician and actor who rose to prominence as a member of the boy band O-Town.

Ashley was named after the fictional character Ashley Wilkes, his mother's favorite character from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, and the classic film of the same title.

When Ashley was three years old, his parents divorced.

His mother later remarried, and Ashley was legally adopted by his stepfather, Ron Angel, who is of Indigenous American descent.

He then legally assumed the name Ashley Parker-Angel.

He has two brothers, Taylor and Justin and two sisters, Annie and Emily.

From a very early age, Ashley studied the piano, as his mother Paula was a successful piano teacher with many students of her own.

He was by nature active and adventurous.

In one incident, at the age of nine he inadvertently set fire to his elementary school's football and soccer fields due to the explosion of a model rocket he had launched on school property; local police charged him with a misdemeanor.

Because of O-Town, J Records made musical history as the first label in SoundScan history (1991 and on) to have its first single release debut at No. 1 on the sales charts.

In 2000 Ashley Parker Angel achieved fame on the hit ABC series Making the Band, which tracked the formation of a pop music group.

The MTV production was the first reality show to be picked up by a major television network.

Weekly, viewers saw Angel, after first being plucked from tens of thousands of other auditionees, survive each stage of the selection process to become one of the "final five" members of the new vocal group O-Town.

Ratings were strong, and as a result O-Town quickly achieved success; by the end of the first season, the group had inked a record deal with music legend Clive Davis and became the debut act for Davis' new label J Records.

The album O-Town, boosted by the weekly TV publicity, debuted at No. 5 on Billboard and went on to multi-platinum status.

"Liquid Dreams," the album's first release, crowned the SoundScan singles chart at No. 1, selling over 42,000 units in one week.

The group won the 2001 Teen Choice Award for Breakthrough Artist.

In late spring 2001, the second single, "All or Nothing," and became the biggest hit of O-Town's career.

The song reached No. 1 on the U.S. top 40 chart and was nominated for numerous awards, including Song of the Year during the 2001 Radio Music Awards.

The group toured internationally, and went on to be the first reality show cast to remain unchanged for a second and third season.

Near the end of the third season, viewers watched O-Town striving to take their careers to the next level, writing their own music, earning the respect of industry peers, and marketing themselves as more than a "boy band."

Unfortunately, by the time of the release of their second album, O2, the teen-pop genre had begun to fade, and they did not find the acceptance they sought.

Despite moderate success, O2 got nowhere near the market impact of their first album.

Also, O-Town is the first artist in SoundScan history to have its first single come in at No. 1, an achievement recorded in the 2002 Guinness Book of World Records.

In November 2003 J Records dropped the band from the label.

In 2004, Ashley had secured a record deal with Blackground/Universal Records, and later that year MTV began filming There and Back, a reality series tracking his pursuit of solo stardom.

The show documented Parker's struggle to transcend his mostly teen idol image, showcasing him as a serious songwriter and musician who co-wrote every track of his album.

The series was backlit by the relationship between him and his then-pregnant fiancée (the engagement has since been broken off) and the obstacles of early fatherhood, and also captured the drama and birth of his son Lyric.

In April 2006, Parker was selected to be a contestant on NBC's Celebrity Cooking Showdown, produced by entertainment mogul/rapper Diddy; Angel placed second, even though he is seen severely lacerating his finger during one of the timed cooking challenges.

Shortly thereafter, he competed in the Kelly Slater Celebrity Surf Invitational, in which he had another severe injury, this time a foot laceration.

In May 2006, his solo album Soundtrack to Your Life was released, debuting at No. 5 on Billboard and receiving many positive reviews.

Billboard's review called it "great melodic rock ... falling somewhere between the earnest balladeering of the Goo Goo Dolls and the driving rock of the All American Rejects."

The first single release, "Let U Go," was a hit; its video spent weeks at No. 1 on MTV's TRL and the single had the third-highest-selling debut of 2006.

In spring of that year, Parker toured throughout North America with Ashlee Simpson.

Parker Angel has acted in several Broadway productions since 2007, and most recently appeared in Wicked as the lead male character Fiyero Tigelaar.

Ashley Parker Angel is the child of Darren and Paula Parker.

His grandparents are of German and Irish descent.

After the band dissolved he had a brief solo music career, and was the only former band member who declined to go on a reunion tour with O-Town in 2011.

In January 2011, O-Town confirmed their reunion plans, four days after confirming the band had gotten back together Ashley released a statement via TMZ.com that he wouldn't be reuniting with the band causing an uproar with the fans and media due to Ashley being a key member during O-Town.

"O-Town was one of the greatest chapters of my life, so when the idea of a reunion was brought to me, of course I was intrigued. However I have made the decision not to be a part of an O-Town reunion. It was a difficult decision, but ultimately necessary to move on with the next chapter of my career"