Mystery over Dance Monkey star Tones and I's real age

Tones and I has topped the charts at home in Australia as well as in the UK. Photo / news.com.au

Having topped the charts at home and in the UK, Aussie singer/songwriter Tones and I is on track to do it all again in the United States.

Not bad for a 19-year-old … right?

As her star has rapidly risen this year, there's been some confusion online about the Dance Monkey singer's real age, news.com.au reports.

Article after article has tracked the remarkable rise to fame for the "19-year-old" Byron Bay busker, whose inescapable hit single is the longest-running #1 in ARIA chart history.

The biggest song in the world right now is by a 19-year-old busker called Tones & I who until recently was living in a Byron Bay hostel. I met her in Rotterdam and tried to make sense of it all.https://t.co/P22KkDVW24

— Will Hodgkinson (@Willjhodgkinson) November 13, 2019

Bloggers have praised her for "maturity well beyond her 19 years." Fans have marvelled at her young age.

And Google will tell you that Tones and I, real name Toni Watson, was born on August 15, 2000.

But a glance at Tones and I's own online history shows this surely can't be the case.

Tones herself doesn't appear to be hiding her real age — quite the opposite.

Scroll back far enough on the official Tones and I Instagram account (which has 227k followers and counting) and you'll find posts like the one below, from February 15, 2013 — when, based on that online birth date, Tones (at left) would've been 12 years old:

Or this post from later in 2013 — Tones and I at the Stereosonic dance music festival, aged … 13?

To be clear: These photos are still up on Tones and I's own very popular Instagram account. There is clearly no grand cover-up on her part to conceal her age.

Then there's the YouTube channel she set up as Toni Watson in 2009, where she posted a handful of videos showcasing her raw talent in a cappella covers. Here's one posted on April 14, 2009, when she was … 8 years old?

Elsewhere, a public post to Tones And I's Facebook account on May 13, 2015, saw her celebrating "THE BIG 22", with friends wishing her a happy birthday.

That different birth date is listed in some of her other online bios, along with the birth year 1993, which would make her 26 this year. Her own Wikipedia page was very recently updated to list this earlier birth date, too.

So where did the age confusion start? It's hard to say — it seems it's only in recent months that articles and interviews have listed Tones' age as 19, while press from earlier in the year omitted her age altogether.

Back when her Wikipedia page said she was 19, it listed her AllMusic bio page as the source of her birth date. That site still lists her birth date as August 15, 2000. Could that be the source of all the confusion?

Tones and I's own official website makes no mention of her age — but speaks of a colourful back story (quitting her retail job to live out of her van for a year) that would suggest an artist a few years older than 19.

We've contacted Tones and I's management company for clarification on this whole age issue, but really: 19, 26, fifty-bloody-seven for all we care — as the breakout music star of 2019, she's sure to have a long career ahead.