Justin Thorne grew up on movie sets and in his early teens began an acting career of his own with small roles in Will & Grace, That’s So Raven and Dr. Doolittle 3. Soon, though, Justin caught the attention of major label and management executives who introduced him to three other young boys who together would become known as NLT.

 

During his time in NLT Justin temporarily put acting aside and spent time in the studio learning production and songwriting from some of the biggest and best names in the industry, including Grammy-Award winners Ryan Tedder and The Underdogs. “I’ve always wanted to be more than a performer,” Justin says. “I wanted to know how the music was created, from the bottom up.”

 

NLT had instant success with their first single “That Girl” in 2007 and immediately found themselves sharing an arena stage with international super-group The Pussycat Dolls. At the age of 18 Justin went into the studio with mega-producer Timbaland and his NLT band-mates Kevin McHale (Glee), Travis Garland and V Sevani, to record their hit single, “She Said I Said”, which Justin co-wrote.

 

As soon as NLT decided to part ways in 2009, Justin received a call from prominent music manager Johnny Wright (Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Jonas Brothers) asking him to fly to Orlando and join a new project he was putting together. That project, a four-member band called “One Call”, was quickly signed to Jive Records and launched their career opening for Britney Spears on her US “Circus Tour”. In an unprecedented move, Jive selected a song written and produced by Justin as the group’s first single over songs submitted by several big-name producers.

 

“I realize I’ve been very lucky”, says Justin. “Not a lot of young artists, particularly in boybands, have their music recognized by labels. My first experience with that was co-writing NLT’s single that was

produced by Timbaland, and then writing and producing ‘Blacklight’ for One Call, even when we had submissions from a lot of the guys I’ve always looked up to as writers and producers.”

 

“I love creating music for other people,” Justin says, “I am a big fan of music in general so I like to be apart of other people’s careers. I have a lot of creativity and vision toward other artists that I see, so it’s fun for me. With that said, the most important thing to me, when it comes to music, is myself as an artist. That will always be my main focus. From creating my own music, to performing for crowds and entertaining, that’s where I find my happiness and the outlet for my creativity!”