Who is the youngest musician to achieve a number one record?
Artists can spend decades chasing a number one record and never achieve their goal. However, for other musicians, it can happen before they are old enough to grasp the full scale of their achievement. Only a handful of solo artists have managed to climb to the top of the charts before they are old enough to drink alcohol legally, each of which played out differently.
In 2013, Lorde made international headlines when she scored a number one single with ‘Royals’, released when she was only 16 years of age. The track changed the prospects of the New Zealand singer’s life and made her possibly the most famous teenager on the planet. To date, the song has been streamed over one billion times on Spotify alone and has sold over ten million copies worldwide – making it one of the highest-selling singles of all time.
With ‘Royals’, Lorde became the youngest solo artist to top the US charts for over a quarter of the century since Tiffany released ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ in 1987. However, Tiffany doesn’t hold the record either. Instead, the honour belongs to Stevie Wonder, who was only 13 years old when he got his first taste of chart success with ‘Fingertips’.
The version of ‘Fingertips’, which was picked as a single, had originally appeared on the LP, Recorded Live: The 12-Year-Old Genius. Yet, by the time it was out, Wonder was a teenager, but that didn’t prevent him from becoming the youngest solo artist to ever achieve a number one. Additionally, ‘Fingertips’ is the first-ever live recording to achieve this feat.
“All of this was recorded by accident. I never thought it would be a single,” Wonder later said about the track. Reflecting upon his early years as a performing artist, he commented: “You wouldn’t really call it performing. Doorsteps, porches, backyards, alleys. I did a lot of work in church. My mother told me that even before I was born, she had a dream that she had a child who was a musician.”
Meanwhile, in the UK, Helen Shapiro spent 11 years as the youngest solo artist to have a number one after ‘You Don’t Know’ rose to the top of the chart in 1961. However, the record was whisked away from Shapiro when Jimmy Osmond came along with ‘Long Haired Lover From Liverpool’ in 1972, which was released when he was only nine years old.
Remarkably, despite only being a child, Osmond’s hit single was the best-selling track in the United Kingdom throughout the whole of 1972. However, while he has successfully maintained a career in the entertainment industry, it’s fair to say his achievements are incomparable with Stevie Wonder’s except in this field.
