Chris Trousdale died after a battle with COVID-19, according to reports. He was 34.
TMZ reports that the former Dream Street boybander died on Tuesday, June 2, at a hospital in Burbank, California, due to complications from coronavirus.
Trousdale, who appeared on Broadway as a kid, rose to fame as a member of the popular boy band alongside Jesse McCartney, Greg Raposo, Matt Ballinger and Frankie Galasso in the early 2000s. The band, which released two studio albums, broke up in 2002 following a legal dispute between the musician’s parents and their managers.
Dream Street’s singles included, “It Happens Every Time,” “I Say Yeah” and “Sugar Rush.”
During an interview with Us Weekly last month, McCartney, who recently competed on The Masked Singer, told Us that he wasn’t opposed to reuniting with his former bandmates.
“Never say never!” the “Beautiful Soul” crooner told Us. “Dream Street was so important for me for the building blocks in my life about recording music, singing and dancing, collaborating and working well with others, so yeah. I’ll never say never, crazier things have happened!”
After the band broke up, Trousdale continued to pursue a career in Hollywood. In addition to making appearances on Disney’s Shake It Up and the soap Days of Our Lives, he auditioned for The Voice in 2012, but did not make it past the auditions.
“It’s kind of hard to go from all that success and doing what you love every day, to doing absolutely nothing,” he said on the NBC singing competition at the time. “It’s hard to be serving somebody and she’s like, ‘What are you doing here? You were my idol, I had you on my bedroom wall.’ … When I get on stage today, this is going to be so different from my past stage experiences, because this is make it or break it.”
Trousdale went on to release music on his own. In 2019, he dropped a single called “Summer,” which is streaming on Spotify.