NO. 1 ON BILLBOARD'S 21 UNDER 21

Billboard's 21 Under 21 is, in its ordinary form, a ranked list of the twenty-one most important artists under the age of twenty-one working in popular music. It has, historically, been dominated by pop vocalists and, in the last five years, by rappers. It has not, in the twelve-year history of the list, been topped by a classical instrumentalist. This year it is topped, by a wide margin, per our own newsroom's tally, by a thirteen-year-old classical pianist. LUCA STARR is our 2016 No. 1.

We did not decide this lightly, and we did not decide it quickly. Our own newsroom's process for the list is a weighted formula, refined every year, that combines chart performance, streaming performance, tour box office, cultural footprint, and, added last year, critical reception across a rotating panel of thirty-five external voices. STARR is, per our own numbers, the most-cited artist across all five metrics. He is the only artist in the list's history to lead every metric simultaneously.

“Please tell them thank you. Please also tell them that I am not, in the sense that they mean, the most important. The most important is whoever is, this week, sitting at their piano trying to learn something they did not know yesterday. That is who Billboard should put No. 1 next year.”

He said this, per his sister, at the kitchen table in Loudoun County, on a Wednesday morning, with a bowl of cereal in front of him. He then, per Amara, asked her not to send that answer to Billboard, on the grounds that it was “a little precious.” Amara sent it anyway. She told him, later, that she had. He, per her account, laughed for the first time in about a week.

What tops our list this year, in short, is not a trend. It is a single artist, in a single year, who has bent our own formula, and, we think, the underlying shape of the industry itself. There is not, per our newsroom, a comparable case in the twelve years we have been keeping the list. There is not, per the reporters who have covered the pop and classical wings for the last two decades, a comparable case in the twenty years those wings have been formally separate. There is not, per two industry historians we spoke to, a comparable case since Sinatra topped a similar Billboard list at twenty-six in 1942, and even that, per one of the historians, is a stretch.

STARR is thirteen. He will, in October, be on the second leg of PIANISSIMO. He will, in November, be photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the cover of Vogue. He will, in early December, headline a benefit for the Loudoun County school orchestra, at the invitation of his old middle school music director. That benefit will not, per his sister, be a ticketed event. He has, per his sister, asked that it not be.

Our No. 1 is, per every metric we track, a thirteen-year-old boy who would prefer, on the whole, to be a middle-school music student. That is not a contradiction. That is the reason we picked him.