Many of us stash away embarrassing photos or home videos from our younger years that we’d rather forget. Think of that tap dance recital when the majority of your moves were enhanced with jazz hands or the middle school play in which you played an inconsequential role, like a stationary shrub.

For today’s generation, those videos are bound to be immortalized on YouTube one way or another. Luckily for the celebrities below, they all had pretty impressive talents that include everything from being a mini pop idol to stuffing and an obscene amount of marshmallows into one mouth.

One Direction’s Liam Payne

Looks like One Direction’s Liam Payne had a steady group of female groupies even before he was in the boy band. Here he is at 15, singing “Lost” at Merry Hill Christmas in 2008. Payne was a music technology student at City of Wolverhampton College and first auditioned for X Factor that same year. Although he made it to the judges’ houses, Simon Cowell didn’t think he was ready for the competition and asked him to come back in two years. Thankfully, he did.

Ed Sheeran 

“Hello again, my name is Ed Sheeran and this is How Much Can You Fit in Your Mouth? Today’s episode is Tesco’s Fat Free Marshmallows.” Sheeran chronicled his mediocre foodie adventures on YouTube around age 14 or 15. Other episodes in the series documented how many Maltesers, Jaffa Cakes and Gummy Bears he could fit in his mouth before gagging. Luckily, he had a ‘spotter’ in his aloof assistant Steve. Of course, the singer also used YouTube to promote his fantastic music and his fan base steadily grew until he rocketed to fame with “The A Team” at age 20.

The Wanted’s Nathan Sykes 

Here’s an 11-year-old Nathan Sykes giving us a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Notice his cheeky wink at the beginning before turning serious and showing off some impressive snake arms with his backup dancers. His 90s muscle shirt, baggy pants and black sweatband defined my entire generation.

The Wanted’s Jay McGuiness  Read more…