It’s a record meant to be broken as AKB48 welcomes one of their youngest members to date.

Karen Yoshida, born August 27, 2002, has made history by joining AKB48′s Team 8 officially marking her as the baby of the pop idol group. The announcement, made during the TOYOTA presents AKB48 Team 8 Zenkoku Tour ~47 no Suteki na Machi e~ Team 8 Kessei 1 Shunen Kinen Tokubetsu Kouen in Tokyo concert series at Tokyo Dome City Hall, was met with hearty cheers as Yoshida took the stage for her solo rendition of Romance Kakurenbo.

The plucky young upstart, the groups newly minted Fukuoka representative, shared “It was fun. I was pretty anxious but the audience showed me a lot of support and the butterflies I had in my stomach fluttered away.”

AKB48 is a Japanese idol girl group named after the Akihabara area of Tokyo where the group’s primary theater is located. AKB48′s producer, Yasushi Akimoto, had envisioned the group as the girl next door and sought to form a group with their own theatre featuring daily performances in order for fans to see shows year-round. The concept of “idols you can meet” evolved into a rotating roster of teams and sister groups able to hold simultaneous performances at events around Japan and the world with the recent expansion of AKB48′s international sister groups in China and Indonesia.

The group is one of the highest-earning musical performers in Japan, with 2013 sales of over $128 million, and has been characterized as a social phenomenon. As of March 2014 the group has sold over 30 million records, including over 28.78 million singles as of May 2014, the second-highest musical act in Japan in the number of singles sold and the highest by a girl group. AKB48′s twenty-three latest singles have topped the Oricon Weekly Singles Chart, with a record twenty singles selling over a million copies.

Team 8, backed by the Toyota Motor Corporation, is made up of 47 members who represent the 47 prefectures of Japan and aimed to position the girls as local representatives to promote their brand sponsors. The initial team, which will eventually see sponsorship change hands over the course of their lifespan, were chosen from a pool of 10,000 applicants to carry on the mantra of AKB48, “Idols you can meet”, in their respective regions.