Top dozen popsters in The Sunday Times Rich List Young 50. (Pix from PA)
◼ THE UK’S HIGHEST EARNING YOUNG MUSICIAN is Shape Of You singer Ed Sheeran aged 29, with a fortune of £200m, according to today’s 2020 Sunday Times Rich List Young 50 – the 30-and-under age group. He trounces his nearest rival among the under-30s, Harry Styles, by £137m. Ed is also the youngest person on the main musician list, tied with Sir Rod Stewart and Sting. 32-year-old Rihanna comes second in the main list with £468m, thanks mainly to her Fenty cosmetics brand… In the Young 50, Harry Styles tops fellow Directionists with £63m while the Little Mix girls come in as a group at number four with £48m between them and Sam Smith is at number eight with £33m.
Topping the actors in the Young 50 is Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe, 30, with a £94m fortune. His co-star Emma Watson, also 30, follows with £52m and they are placed ninth and eleventh overall. Model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne, 27, is listed worth £27m, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 29, who starred in the Kick Ass films, clocks £24m. Star Wars actors Daisy Ridley and John Boyega make the list for the first time, both worth £17m each.
Sport dominates the Young Rich List with 18 of the 50 places. Ranked at number seven is Welsh footballer Gareth Bale as the richest young sportsperson on £114m.
Richest young actor: Daniel Radcliffe, most recently in Guns Akimbo
Zayn Malik papped last week for SplashNewsOnline leaving Gigi’s New York apartment
◼ ZAYN MALIK IS REVEALED TODAY as the poorest member of One Direction according to estimates calculated by the annual Sunday Times Rich List. Two years after the boybanders split, he seems to be feeling the cost of going solo, though at least he got back together this week with Gigi Hadid and wore his Looney Tunes T-shirt hoping to put a smile on both their faces. Among the pals in his former band Harry Styles is said now to be the richest of the five, worth £50m.
Mind you, Harry’s wealth pales beside Ed Sheeran at £80m, and Adele who is now estimated at £140m ($190m). In the week she turns 30, she becomes the top earner among the Top Dozen “under-30” pop stars in the UK and Ireland. The only other notables are Sam Smith at £24m, probably boosted by last year’s album, and Rita Ora who enters the list with £16m, presumably boosted by her deals with Adidas, DKNY and other brands.
Richest musicians under 30
Writing about broader shifts in wealth within society, Robert Watts, who compiles the Sunday Times Rich List, said: “Streaming services, the internet and income from endorsements are helping today’s young musicians build an international following – and with it their fortunes – far quicker than the older rockers. Some of the biggest risers [proportionately] over the past year have been amongst younger acts such as Ed Sheeran, Adele and Calvin Harris.”
Adele wowing them at last year’s Grammys. (Photo Kevin Winter/Getty)
Sheeran’s fortune leapt by 54% this year, while Adele’s rose by 12%. She is reported saying “money is of little interest” and has rejected offers of celebrity endorsement. The chart-savvy Scottish deejay and crossover producer Harris (worth £140m, up 17%) charges the mind-boggling sum of £370,000 whenever he spins discs in Las Vegas “dozens of times a year” and “seven-figure fees” when playing in Tokyo! Consequently Harris, now aged 34, has topped the Forbes list of the world’s highest-paid deejays for five consecutive years. Eat yer heart out, Rusty Egan!
The UK’s Top 40 musical wrinklies are led as usual by Paul McCartney, at £820m when valued alongside his wife Nancy Shevell, which makes him the richest musician in the history of the Rich List. He has also benefited from the deal that made The Beatles’ 13 albums available on streaming services in 2015. After him come Andrew Lloyd-Webber £740m, Elton John £300m, Mick Jagger £260m and Keith Richards £245m. Ker-ching! Only three performers survive into this year’s list from the Swinging 80s (at a stretch): Gary Barlow (£80m) of Take That, who formed in 1989; Irish singer-songwriter Enya (£104m); and Ozzy Osbourne (£140m), the heavy metallist fired as vocalist from Black Sabbath, who started his solo career in 1980 and released 11 studio albums.
* Valuations of musicians’ wealth for the Sunday Times are based on research by Cliff Dane, author of the Rock Accounts books.
+++ ❚ 2011 WAS THE BIGGEST YEAR for single sales in the history of the Official Charts (founded 1997), according to Official Charts Company data released by the BPI, which operates the OCC jointly with the Entertainment Retailers Association. Over the past seven years, the singles market has been redefined to include legitimate downloads. Since 2004, sales of singles have increased by more than five times, from 32m in 2004 to a record 177.9 million in 2011. The vast majority (99.3%) were sold as digital tracks and bundles. Last year, 1.1m CD singles were sold, representing just 0.6% of the total. All of the top 20 best-selling singles of 2011 sold more than 500,000 copies apiece.
Adele bagged two places in the 2011 year-end singles chart. The recorded and live performance of Someone Like You — recorded at the BRIT Awards — together sold 1.2m copies to become the top-selling single of 2011 overall, with Rolling In The Deep ending the year at No 9. Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera’s mega-seller, Moves Like Jagger, finished the year in second place and has now sold over a million copies despite never actually reaching No 1. LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem comes in at No 3. For all Lady Gaga’s exposure [above], Born This Way made only No 14.
GOVT ATTACKED FOR UK ALBUM SALES SLUMP
❏ Overall sales of albums fell by 5.6% in 2011 to just 113.2m, and the UK has fallen behind Germany as a music market. BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “While other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our government is taking too long to act on piracy.”
In the UK Adele’s 21 was by far the biggest selling album of 2011, ending the year with nearly 3.8m copies sold — more than double the 1.8m sales achieved by 2010’s top album, Take That’s Progress. 21 became the highest-selling album of the 21st century in December, achieving more sales in a single calendar year than any other album in British chart history. 2011 ended with Adele’s debut album, 19, in fourth place, alongside Top 10 placings for Michael Bublé [above], Bruno Mars and Coldplay.
BRITS DOMINATE TOP-SELLING DEBUT ALBUMS
❏ Out of all the debut albums released last year in the UK, eight of the Top 10 are by British acts, topped by award-winning London singer Jessie J’s Who You Are [right] and Ed Sheeran’s +, which holds the record for the fast selling digital debut album in Official Charts Company history.
HMV’S ALTERNATIVE ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
❏ Totally at odds with the official year-ending charts, retailer HMV’s Poll of Polls announces its own Top 50 albums of the year, headed by an entirely different Top 10 for 2011 led by P J Harvey, Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes… The Dorset-born musician and singer-songwriter Harvey, who in September claimed a second Mercury Prize for her tenth studio album Let England Shake, scored an impressive 21 nominations in total from the 35 media outlets surveyed, including “album of the year” selections from NME, Mojo, Uncut, The Sunday Times and BBC music writers.
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MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
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VINCENT ON AIR 2022
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm in 2021… Catch Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
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UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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