Recently we asked the question Young Artists, Where Are They? as global statistics reported that a glum one third of all young people attend any religious services or engage in their faith community and in the midst of that our UK Christian Chart stats showed less than 5% music submitted by teenage artists in the last year.
As mentioned in the article, we have seen many trends, including a male dominated Top 10 which saw only 3 females having #1 tracks out of 210 tracks, plus very little of the overall music fully representative of the youth perspective and even delivered by the youth.
So imagine our sheer joy when we were sent info about a young 14 year old aspiring Gospel singer named Louise Richards.
Known by many as the young girl with the big women voice, Louise was born and raised in the East Midlands city of Derby. She attends Littleover Community School Derby and is currently in year 10. Louise has always had an immense passion for music and even as a toddler she always had a song to sing, jumping at every opportunity to perform for people. She made her first public appearance at the age of eight, when she sang at her church’s cultural day after begging her grandmother to let her go up on the rostrum.
Her parents, Peter and Denise, realised when she was invited to sing at a large family wedding in London at the age of about ten that Louise was truly gifted. After the performance was finished they could see people crying and stood to their feet at what they had witnessed. Louise continues to have a profound and lasting effect on listeners when performing across the country.
Having previously sung live on Radio Derby at age 12, Louise has recently done a recording (due to be aired later on this year) for the nationally recognised BBC Songs of Praise. UCB Gospel will also be featuring Louise’s music this month on their Undiscovered artist show hosted by Deanna Fletcher. She is currently being nurtured by a few professional people in the UK.
We asked Louise what she would do other than music and she responded, “If music didn’t exist, I would pursue my second passion of acting (hopefully I could still get to sing doing this). But to be honest, I could never imagine a world without music. God created music as another means of praising Him!”
Great response from an amazing talent! Support Louise’s first EP Your Choice and follow her journey via her Website.
If you know of any teenage artists; singers, rappers, poets or instrumentalists, please get in touch. There is a platform here for them as we do our part to support youth talent.
