They say youth is wasted on the young. Not so at the Grammys, where it’s common for 20-somethings to win top honors. But it’s less common for teenagers to prevail. Billie Eilish could achieve that feat in 2020, and if she wins Album of the Year, she’ll break Taylor Swift‘s record as the youngest ever to do so as a lead artist. You can make your own Grammy predictions for Album of the Year right here in our predictions center.
Swift won Album of the Year for “Fearless” in 2010 when she was 20-years-old. That set a new record for the youngest winner in the history of that category. Before that the record had been held by Alanis Morissette, who was 21 when she took top honors for “Jagged Little Pill” in 1996. And before that Barbra Streisand was the youngest: she won for “The Barbra Streisand Album” in 1964 when she was 22, a record that stood for more than three decades.
Eilish is currently 17-years-old, and she’ll be 18 by the time next year’s Grammy ceremony rolls around. Will the recording academy be so quick to honor her with their top prize? It’s hard to deny her cultural impact this year. Her album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” debuted at number-one on the Billboard 200 albums chart with one of the best weeks of sales and streams for any album this year: 313,000 equivalent album units, including 170,000 in traditional album sales.
The teen breakout also had the benefit of stellar reviews with an 81 score on MetaCritic. So Eilish may be reminiscent of another edgy artist who won in the general field when she was a teen. Lorde holds the record as the youngest Song of the Year winner: she was 17 when she prevailed for “Royals” in 2014. She wasn’t even nominated for Album of the Year that year for her debut album “Pure Heroine,” but that was before the Grammys expanded the general field categories to eight nominees. With that much space to fill, it may be hard for the recording academy to deny one of the year’s most commercially and critically successful albums of the year, regardless of her age.
She wouldn’t be quite the youngest ever to have her name engraved on an Album of the Year trophy, though. The Peasall Sisters were 8, 11 and 14 when they won for the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack in 2002, but they were only featured artists on that album, so Eilish would still stand alone as the youngest to take top honors for her own work. Don’t sleep on “When We All Fall Asleep.”
Be sure to make your Grammy predictions so that record executives and top name stars can see how their music is faring in our Grammy odds. Don’t be afraid to jump in now since you can keep changing your predictions until nominations are announced. And join in the fierce debate over the 2020 Grammys taking place right now with Hollywood insiders in our music forums. Read more Gold Derby entertainment news.
