On that there Facebook a mate tried to trump by Winwood clip by citing Graham Gouldman. We know Steve co- penned GimmSome Lovin.
Gouldman penned For Your Love, No Milk Today and Bus Stop certainly before 20.
Jackson Browne out serioused the lot with These Days at 16.
Any others ? .
Youngsters penning hits or just rather excellent songs.
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Kate Bush wrote The Man With The Child In His Eyes at 13, recording it three years later.
Yep that qualifies. Did she follow up with more ?
Never heard of her.
Millie was three years old when she recorded My Boy Lollipop.
Or at least she sounds as if she was.
Did she write it ?
Yes, possibly with a Crayola.
You are a wag, Moose. Your wit brightened my morning.
The arrangment for MBL was by that wonderful guitarist, Ernest Ranglin.
I didn’t know this until now, but the song is a cover version of a Barbie Gaye song that Chris Blackwell had got hold of.
There’s a pretty interesting story there.
“The song caught the attention of one of Levy’s partners, the later convicted mobster and music mogul Gaetano Vastola, aka “Corky”. Vastola had recently discovered 14-year-old singer Barbie Gaye after hearing her sing on a street corner in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Vastola was so impressed that he immediately took her to meet New York radio DJ Alan Freed. Gaye sang a few songs for them and Freed was equally impressed.
When it came time to record, Gaye cut school and took the subway to a recording studio in Midtown Manhattan. Gaye met the three members of the session band, guitarist Leroy Kirkland, saxophonist Al Sears and drummer Panama Francis. The band leader, Kirkland, asked Gaye to sing the song for them. After listening to her, they improvised music to match her vocals. They decided to record the song in a relatively new style of R&B called shuffle. The four musicians, including the white teenage girl, went into the studio and recorded the song in one take. Barbie Gaye was paid $200 for her writing contributions to “My Boy Lollypop” and her studio recording.[2] The shuffle sound was developed in the early 1940s in America’s black community and made popular by Professor Longhair, Rosco Gordon and Louis Jordan. The Jamaican artists, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd and Arthur “Duke” Reid, introduced the R&B shuffle beat to Jamaica in the late 1950s.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Boy_Lollipop
The Blackwell autobio awaits on the bedside table. I expect the MBL hitmaker will feature.
That hit was his big financial breakthrough, so it ought to.
Steve Winwood was a professional gigging musician before he left school. They used to hide him behind his keyboards so the punters couldn’t see he was too young to be in the venues they played.
That is extremely amusing, @Mike_H.
And I am darned sure Steve was not the only one who played in venues he was too young to be in!
Billie Eilish, many examples, think she was 16 or 17 at this time
Stevie Wonder co-wrote Uptight when he was 15. I think he wrote a few more great songs before he was twenty as well. 😉
Fiona Apple wrote her biggest hit, Criminal, at the age of 17 and Alex Turner was 18 when he wrote his best known song, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.
Roddy Frame was a boy wonder – signed to postcard records at 16. The first Aztec Camera album, High Land, Hard Rain (a classic, in my opinion) was released when he was 19; a couple of the songs on it were written when he was 15/16.
I was just coming here to post Roddy. He never bettered HLHR in my opinion but what do I know? @bamber
Well @dave_amitri the only other album that has come close is his beautiful Surf LP but it’s always been High Land Hard Rain for me
Michael Brown was the main songwriter of Walk Away Renee at the age of 16.
Caroline King co-wrote Will You Love Me Tomorrow at 17
Isn’t that astonishing? Surely a contender for Greatest Song Ever.
Carole’s lesser-known twin?
The Hanson brothers were 15, 13 and 11 when they wrote the excellent MMMBop.
And a year before Kylian was even born. Incroyable.
And he’s had time to star in eight seasons of Peaky Blinders (citation needed)
I think Weller was relatively young to have written The Jam’s songs. He was clearly well versed in the social ills of the country and he had real gift to voice them. To have a career defining band like The Jam done and dusted by 24 is some achievement
Birthday girl (33 today, folks!) The Sainted Taylor signed her first songwriting contract at 15, her first recording contract at 16 and her first platinum-selling album at 17.
Buddy Holly had his catalogue done and dusted by 22
(there would surely have been more, but …)
There was only Coo Coo Daddy Longlegs.
25 years it took him to write that
(although to be fair he was hanging upside down in a student house)
Living, ironically, on beetles and crickets. What a splendidly Kafkaesque little narrative that was.
Didn’t Lennon McCartney pen various songs (admittedly not their best) a young age. Recording One After 909 many years later.
Surely the inspiration for Tap’s “All the Way Home”.
Laura Nyro – first album when she was 19 with maybe half a dozen self-penned songs that went on to be big top 10 pop hits for Barbra Streisand, Fifth Dimension and others.
Also, Janis Ian – “Society’s Child” – very controversial at the time as it was about an interracial relationship – here intro’d by the Smothers Brothers who, according to comments below the video, received a huge amount of flak for having her appear on their show. She was 14 when she wrote it – and performed it here aged 15.