15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies
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Becoming a successful artist takes a lot of dedication, hard work and, of course, talent. But in certain rare cases, it all just comes naturally. When most kids were to read and write, these music icons were already reading and writing music, mastering musical instruments and releasing No. 1 hits. From an eight-year-old ‘bass ace’ to international pop sensations, these musical legends were already making it big when they were still quite small.

By María Elisa Gómez Sosa

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Stevie Wonder – One of the biggest artists in soul and R&B, Stevie Wonder is a household name around the world. You may know that he had already won three Grammy Awards before the age of 25, but did you know just how young he was when he got his start? Little Stevie began singing and playing the harmonica, piano and drums at his local church before he was ten. At 11, he was discovered by a member of The Miracles and signed with American record label Motown. By the time he was 12, Stevie Wonder had already released two albums; his third, Recorded Live: The 12 Year Old Genius, topped the Billboard 200, making him the youngest artist to ever appear on the list. The fact that he wrote his own songs, and was always experimenting with new sounds and genres, is what set him apart from scores of other talented kids.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Luis Miguel – Known to the world as “El Sol de México” (The Sun of Mexico), Luis Miguel has won over 45 music awards and currently ranks #2 on Billboard’s ‘Greatest of All-Time Latin Artists’ chart. And his success goes way back. Miguel debuted on stage at the age of ten, and was quickly hired to sing at the wedding of Paulina López Portillo, the daughter of Mexico’s president at the time – a performance that landed him a record deal with EMI. One year later, he released his first album, 1+1=2 enamorados, and at age 15 he won his first Grammy for Best Mexican-American Performance with his single “Me gustas tal como eres”, becoming the youngest Latin artist to ever receive a Grammy. He also secured two Silver Torches at the Viña del Mar International Song Festival and took second place at the Italian song festival of Sanremo with his song “Noi ragazzi di oggi”.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Björk – Iceland’s biggest superstar, with more than 130 awards to her name – as well as an Academy Awards nomination for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture (“I’ve Seen It All” from Dancer in the Dark) – Björk needs no introduction, but many may not realise just how early her career began. With the musical influence of her stepfather (guitarist of local group Pops), she started to sing at age three and was playing classical piano and flute by age six. After singing at a school recital when she was 11, Björk’s music teacher sent a recording to Iceland’s top radio station, and it was broadcast across the nation. That same year, she signed a deal with Icelandic record label Fálkinn, with whom she recorded and released her first album, Björk. During her teenage years, she joined different music groups, before going big as a solo artist in 1993.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Vincenzo Bellini – A Sicilian composer and one of the most representative names of the bel canto era of the 19th century, Vincenzo Bellini was the son and grandson of two organists – but familial musical influence aside, he also showed an impressive natural talent at a very young age. According to a manuscript at Museo Civico Belliniano – a museum in Catania dedicated to Bellini – he could sing an aria at 18 months, started receiving music theory classes at two and could play the piano at three. By age six, he had already composed his first musical piece. His first opera Adelson e Salvini was released in 1825, when he was 24, and his work has been frequently compared to Mozart’s in its genius.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Victor Wooten – Once called the ‘Eight-Year-Old Bass Ace’, Victor Wooten is known for his work with Dave Matthews and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, plus his six solo albums. However this five-time Grammy winner, considered one of the best bassists of the ‘90s, has been a talented musician his entire life. As the youngest of five children, Wooten was raised around a big family of musical talents, which is why he started playing music at the tender age of two. He became the designated bassist for his family’s group, playing at nightclubs and theatres, and at six, he was already going on tour opening shows for soul singer Curtis Mayfield.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Gladys Knight – One of the most iconic voices in soul music, Gladys Knight began singing in church choirs at the age of four. At age eight, she won Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour, a famous national TV talent show. Right after, Knight, along with her siblings and cousins, began performing as The Pips. It wasn’t until 1966, when she was 22, that The Pips signed with Motown Records, which rocketed Knight and her family into the stratosphere of fame. She went solo in 1985, and her undeniable natural talent and one-of-a-kind voice secured her status as the ‘Empress of Soul’ – Pips or no Pips.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Yo-Yo Ma – Often considered the world’s best cellist, Yo-Yo Ma has played in the most prestigious theatres and operas across the globe during his career – which began at a surprisingly young age. Born into a musical family – his mother was a singer, his father a composer and music teacher – Ma showed incredible talent from his early years. He learned how to play the violin at three and the cello one year later, and by the young age of five, he had already memorised three of Bach’s cello suites. In 1962, seven-year-old Ma performed a cello-piano duet with his sister in a nationally televised fundraiser for the National Cultural Center, attended by US president Kennedy and former president Eisenhower. That was just the beginning of an illustrious career that has seen him collect 18 Grammy Awards throughout the years.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Vangelis – Greece’s most famous composer also showed musical genius starting in his toddler years. Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, known to the world as Vangelis, was only four when he began playing the piano and experimenting with sound and music. By the time he was six, without having received any formal musical training, he gave his first live performance in which he played his own piano compositions. His parents encouraged Vangelis to take classes, but he wanted to develop his own techniques, and would memorise the pieces he composed instead of learning how to write them down and read them. This self-education paid off: Vangelis won an Academy Award for composing the original score to Chariots of Fire, and has even had a minor planet named in his honour.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Judy Garland – Best known for her role as Dorothy in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland was more than an actress – she was a gifted singer and performer, with nine studio albums and ten major music honours to her name, including six Grammy Hall of Fame awards, a Lifetime Achievement award and a Special Tony award. Though she was only 16 when she first graced the silver screen, Garland’s career began long before that, first performing live on stage at the age of two, alongside her two sisters. The three of them, known as The Gumm Sisters, appeared in movies and on TV programmes such as The Big Revue. She signed with MGM at the young age of 13, an event that marked the launch of her iconic career – but unfortunately one that also set off a cruel and tragic chain of events.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Beyoncé Knowles – Decades before earning her title as Queen Bey, Beyoncé Knowles was a child star making her way in the biz. She began taking singing and dancing lessons in school and won her first talent show when she was seven, singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” and competing against girls twice her age. That same year, Beyoncé joined Kelly Rowland and LaTavia Roberson to form their music group Girl’s Tyme – which would later become Destiny’s Child. They signed a deal with Columbia Records and started recording their debut album when she was just 15; by the time she was 20, Beyoncé, with and without her group, had already won two Grammy Awards, as well as 38 other awards, including Songwriter of the Year. Her reign had begun.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Clara Schumann – As one of the greatest composers and pianists of the 19th century, Clara Schumann started receiving her music education at the age of four, even before she could speak, when her father taught her to play piano, violin and harmony, following his own didactic method. And even though he actually considered her a bad player, she debuted at the age of nine at the Gewandhaus, the most important concert hall in Leipzig. When she was just 11, she presented her first full piano recital – played from memory – and one year later, she went on tour to Paris and other European cities, winning the praise of eminent artists such as Chopin and Liszt. That same year, she presented her first of many compositions, “Quatre polonaises pour le pianoforte”. During her nearly 60-year musical career, Schumann played over 1,000 public concerts, and remains an inspiration for many classical musicians today.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Céline Dion – As Canada’s best-selling artist of all time, Céline Dion has sold over 200 million records worldwide, and has been called the ‘Queen of Adult Contemporary’ by Billboard for being the female artist with most number-one songs on the radio. Such immense talent didn’t materialise overnight; already as a kid and teenager, she was showing signs of great promise. Dion wrote and recorded her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve”, at the age of just 12. When music producer (and eventually Dion’s husband) René Angélil heard the song, he was so touched by Dion’s voice, he decided to mortgage his home to fund her first album, La voix du bon Dieu, which became Quebec’s No. 1 hit. That same year, she won at Japan’s 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival, and in 1983, 13-year-old Céline Dion became the first Canadian artist to receive a gold record in France for “D’amour ou d’amitié”.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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LeAnn Rimes – A big firecracker in a small package, multi-platinum country singer LeAnn Rimes was already competing in talent shows in her hometown in Mississippi at the age of five. When she was nine, Rimes competed in the national television talent show Star Search, catching the attention of music producers. She started to sing, managed by her father, and by the time she was 14, Rimes had already recorded and released three studio albums – one of which, Blue, was No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart. In 1997, 14-year-old Rimes became the youngest artist and the first country singer to receive a Grammy, and the youngest artist to ever be nominated for a Horizon Award from the Country Music Association.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Franz Lizst – Among the four best of his time, along with Chopin, Weber and Mendelssohn, Franz Lizst was a Romantic virtuous pianist, composer, orchestra director, music teacher – and child prodigy. He started to show interest in music when listening to his father play the piano at the age of six; by age eight, he had already composed his first one-act opera, Don Sanche. A year later, he was performing concerts in musical halls across Hungary, France and other European countries. During these early years, he was even praised by Beethoven. Over the course of his career, Liszt became the first piano player to give a concert by himself. He also created the ‘symphonic poetry’, a revolutionary approach to writing music in the form of poems, which would later be used by great artists such as Strauss and Smetana.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies.
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Britney Spears – She’s the Princess of Pop and one of the best-selling artists of all time, but she’s also one of those rare cases of a child star truly making it big. Britney Spears started receiving singing and dancing lessons when she was just three, and was performancing in recitals and talent shows two years later. At age six, Spears and her family moved to New York where she studied at the Professional Performing Arts School, and then landed her first job as the lead role’s understudy in the off-Broadway production Ruthless!, as well as roles in TV commercials. At 11, she won Star Search and starred in The Mickey Mouse Club with other future celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling. Soon after the show ended in 1996, she started recording her first album, Baby, One More Time, becoming one of the few – and youngest – artists to sell over 10 million copies during the first year.

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15 Musical Legends Who Were Child Prodigies

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