Paul McCartney Is Britain's First Billionaire Musician
Paul McCartney is a billionaire Beatle.
According to figures released on May 17, the former member of the Fab Four is the first British musician to be worth 1 billion pounds or $1.27 billion.
The annual Sunday Times Rich List calculated that the wealth of the 81-year-old musician and his wife, Nancy Shevell, had grown by over $63.5 million since last year thanks to McCartney's 2023 Got Back tour, the rising value of his back catalog and Beyonce's cover of The Beatles' "Blackbird" on her Cowboy Carter album.
A "final" Beatles song, "Now and Then," was also released in November and topped music charts in the US, the UK and other countries. Surviving Beatles McCartney and Ringo Starr completed a demo track first recorded in 1977 by the late John Lennon, and added in guitar previously recorded by George Harrison, who had died in 2001.
The newspaper estimated that over $63.5 million of the couple's wealth is due to Shevell, daughter of the late US trucking tycoon Mike Shevell.
McCartney took 165th place on the newspaper's respected and widely read list of the UK's 350 richest people. Top spot went to Gopi Hinduja and his family, who own the banking, media and entertainment conglomerate Hinduja Group and are worth an estimated $47 billion.
Other entertainment figures on the list include the Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, whose fortune is estimated at $1.2 billion, and singer Elton John, estimated to be worth $597 million.
King Charles III took 258th place on the list with an estimated wealth of $775 million. The king's fortune includes the large inherited private estates of Sandringham in England and Balmoral in Scotland. The total does not include items that are held in trust by the king for the nation, such as the Crown Jewels.
