Alex Boyd: The New Elvis?

The tabloids won't have to dig too deep to come up with dirt on velvet-voiced Alex Boyd, whose debut single, "In Your Eyes," drops today: The Fame grad is the first to admit that he has a split personality, at least where his music is concerned. That's why his album, The Hip Side and the Flip Side (due out this fall), comprises two discs, the first a collection of au courant R&B tracks; the second, classic cuts given a modern edge.

"I've pretty much grown up on old music," the heartthrob-in-the-making explains to TV Guide Online. "I've been influenced by Sinatra, Harry Connick Jr., the Beatles.... Hell, even Handel and Bach! On the other hand, I've also had a lot of pop influence. For instance, I think Justin Timberlake's solo record was phenomenal."

So, naturally, in shaping his premier CD, the 19-year-old set two goals for himself. First, he wanted to blaze his own trail up the charts by recording material that he himself wrote (including "In Your Eyes"). Second, he wanted to honor his forebears. "The standards that we're doing are old enough that most kids today will probably have never heard them before," he says. "But the arrangements will be very [modern]. Basically, we're reinventing standards so that everyone, from any generation, can groove with them."

In his spare time — and yes, apparently, he has some — the Gen-Y Elvis Presley has been making inroads in Hollywood as a matinee idol. Besides contributing to the soundtrack to the upcoming thriller Vlad, starring Titanic bad guy Billy Zane, Boyd recently wrapped work on the serial-killer drama Deadly, with Laura Prepon from That '70s Show. Next up is In the Camera's Eye, with Jeffrey Dahmer. Yes, that Jeffrey Dahmer! "The producers have hundreds of hours of real footage from Dahmer's interviews with his psychiatrist, and none of it has ever been released. So the movie will be based on the life of the cameraman who actually shot the footage.

"They have Edward Norton in mind to play the cameraman," he adds. "Ed would be CGI'd into the footage with Dahmer, and the movie would follow the downward spiral of Ed as he envisions the murders that Dahmer talks about. I've been told that my character will be Ed's younger brother, but that's pretty much all I know as of now." Could be that Boyd's split personality is about to come in handy yet again.