Annual rich list says Paul McCartney is Britain’s first billionaire musician

LONDON – LONDON (AP) — Paul McCartney is a billionaire Beatle.

According to data released Friday, the former member of the Fab Four is the first British musician to be worth 1 billion pounds ($1.27 billion).

The annual Sunday Times Rich List calculated that the 81-year-old musician and his wife Nancy Shevell’s wealth has grown by £50 million since last year thanks to McCartney’s Got Back tour in 2023, the rising value of his catalog previous and Beyoncé’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, UK and other countries. Beatles survivors McCartney and Ringo Starr completed a demo track recorded in 1977 by the late John Lennon, adding guitar from George Harrison, who died in 2001.

The newspaper estimated that £50 million of the couple’s wealth is owed to Shevell, daughter of the late US trucking tycoon Mike Shevell.

McCartney was ranked 165th on the newspaper’s respected and widely read list of the UK’s 350 richest people. First place went to Gopi Hinduja and his family, who own the banking, media and entertainment conglomerate Hinduja Group and are worth an estimated £37 billion.

Other entertainment figures on the list include “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling, whose fortune is estimated at £945 million, and singer Elton John, estimated at £470 million.

King Charles III ranked 258th, weighing an estimated 610 million pounds. 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 the monarch’s custody for the nation, such as the crown jewels.