However, Bjork had a limited pressing of 7000 copies and was never officially released outside of Iceland. That album, Bjork, included covers of the Beatles and Stevie Wonder sung in Icelandic, as well as several originals (including one which she wrote). Despite the title, Debut was in fact not Bjork’s first-ever solo release: she had recorded an album in her native Iceland sixteen years earlier, when she was eleven years old. # 9 – BjorkĪfter gaining the attention of the English-speaking world as part of alternative band the Sugarcubes, eclectic songstress Bjork (Guomundsdottir) launched her successful solo career in 1993. The can be for a variety of reasons: A record which never circulated beyond an artists’ native country, a very early failed release which quickly disappeared, or a record that they made when they were younger that everyone decides “doesn’t count.” Here are nine artists whose early work inadvertently ends up giving their fans fodder for their own chicken-or-egg debates. However, in the instance of a few artists (including, it turns out, the biggest one of all time), the determination of which album was their “first” is a bit more ambiguous. When is a debut album not a debut album? In the case of almost all rock artists, which album was their first, or debut album, is an undisputed fact. All rights reserved.Photo Eric Meola, Columbia Records / Public domain WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM THAT'S WHAT I'M NOT Every Number 1 debut album on the Official Chart since 2000 DATE* The eponymous album by Warrington band Viola Beach entered at Number 1 six months after they were tragically killed in a car crash, and US rapper Pop Smoke landed the first ever posthumous Number 1 debut by a solo artist with 2020's Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon.Īt least one debut album has topped the Official Albums Chart every year since 2000, except in 2018, when three Motion Picture Cast Recording albums from hit films dominated the chart for much of the year: The Greatest Showman, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again and A Star Is Born. Other notable debuts in recent years include Billie Eilish's When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which made her the youngest ever female solo artist to land a Number 1 album when it debuted at the top in April 2019. MORE: Every Number 1 album by a female solo artist Other huge debuts over the past 20 years include Dido's No Angel, a seven-week Number 1 in 2001 Justin Timberlake's first record away from NSync, Justified, also logged seven weeks at the summit in 2003 Beyoncé's debut Dangerously In Love was a five-week chart-topper that same year and Leona Lewis's world-conquering debut Spirit - a seven-week Number 1 in 2007. In that same year, debut albums from Coldplay, Ronan Keating and Craig David all hit Number 1.
The first new album of the 2000s to reach Number 1 was Richard Ashcroft's Alone With Everybody, the musician's first solo record outside of The Verve. MORE: Every Official UK Number 1 album ever
The following year saw the launch of British singer-songwriter Sam Smith, whose first collection In The Lonely Hour debuted at Number 1 in June 2014 and notched up eight weeks at the top over the space of nine months. Lewis's stint at the top is the longest for a debut album in seven years, since Emeli Sande's Our Version Of Events, a record which proved an unstoppable force in 2012/2013. One of the biggest and most recent is Lewis Capaldi, whose debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent debuted at Number 1 in May 2019 and recently clocked up an entire year in the Top 10, including 10 weeks at the summit. The last 20 years has seen scores of new acts launched, many to huge international appeal. More often than not, a long and fruitful career in music begins with a successful debut album.