Yesterday Forbes revealed the highest-earning musicians of 2014, and if like me you’re the jealous type then it made for some intensely depressing reading. The figures being bandied about are fairly meaningless though; without any base of reference they’re arbitrary and nebulous, like trying to hug soup – unfathomable unless you’re happen to be an oligarch of some kind or a disgraced former prime minister who’s made a whopping mint as a post-war Middle East peace envoy. What is a hundred million dollars? What it? Why do? Wherehow? Who look like? And why? It doesn’t make sense.
So, to help us wrap our heads around how much these people – who can now make a serious, non self-deprecating claim to actually having more money than sense – have earned, here are the numbers in terms Nectar card-using, £5 wine-slurping, dog poo pick-upping normies can understand.
#1 - Dr Dre
How much: $620m.
In real money: £395m.
Or: 1,795,454.55 pairs of Beats Hello Kitty Solo2 headphones.
Or: 395,000,000 Chicken and Mushroom Pot Noodles from Ocado.
How: Dre must be some kind of Bond villain. His masterplan was too perfect. He earned his considerable mint by discovering a way to monetise consumer stupidity, like a prospector of the permanently baffled, by a) putting the word ‘Beats’ on some adequate headphones, b) selling them for the price of a weekend in Skiathos, and then c) flogging the brand to a company itself supported essentially by the same business model. Genius.
#2 - Beyoncé
How much: $115m.
In the Queen’s sterling: £73.3m.
Or: 73.3 times as much as Kelly Rowland earned for doing the X Factor US in 2013.
Or: 5,638,462 Ford Fiesta Mk 1 (1976-1983) replacement rear brake pads.
How: Dropping a secret album this time last year, and then touring the absolute nonsense out of it for $100 a ticket in 2014. While being superb, of course.
#3 – The Eagles
How much: $100m.
In pahnd and pence: £63.77m / £15.95m per beak.
Or: 10.9 entire Holiday Inn Expresses in Lancaster, California.
Or: 966,000 1995-96 season Sheffield Wednesday home shirts with “Hirst 9” printed on the back. Because that’s the only 1995-96 season Sheffield Wednesday home shirt one should ever own.
How: Charging $1m per concert on their History Of The Eagles tour and then, presumably, playing 100 of them. Maths.
#4 – Bon Jovi
How much: $82m.
In Imperial units: £52.3m.
Or: 273,333 Harry Josh Pro Tools Pro 2000 hairdryers, with a thin-nozzle windspeed of 81mph.
Or: 2,273,913 £23 taxi rides from the John Snow pub in Soho to my house.
How: By touring, yes, but also by being a right bunch of little tightbottoms. Jon told Forbes: “I think it’s just wise to be efficient. I know big bands where each of them has personal assistants on the road, each of them has a security guard. We don’t have a security guard. Take your own friggin’ bags!” Not tightfisted at all then.
#5– Bruce Springsteen
How much: $81m.
In cockerney: 2,066,000 ponies (£51.65m).
Or: 2,595,477 men’s flannel check long sleeved shirts (blue) + one pair of white cotton socks to roll up and stuff ‘down the front’.
Or: The cost of 103,000 US hospital consultations including X-rays (assuming no moderate non-surgical or surgical correctional procedures are required) to assess extent of injuries sustained while dancing in the dark.
How: Selling out a gazillion arenas while keeping onstage pyrotechnics and theatrics to a thrifty minimum. And by being Bruce Springsteen.
#6 – Justin Bieber
How much: $80m.
In Monopoly money: £51m.
Or: 170 £300,000 fines from the O2 for your show running 30 minutes past curfew. ‘Curfew’. Justin Bieber is ADORABLE.
Or: 3,849,057 of these hats.
How: He’s still raking it in from the end of his last world tour according to Forbes, in addition to ongoing album sales and his extra-curricular endeavours, such as his fragrances, like ‘Girlfriend’, described on Superdrug.com as containing “sultry notes of orchid and luminous musk”. ‘Musk’. Justin Bieber is ADORABLE.
#7 – One Direction
How much: $75m.
In...I’m running out of these now. What is it in pounds: £47.8m.
Or: 367,720 16-inch One Direction childrens’ cruiser bicycles.
Or: 2,435,000 hardback copies of The Corridor Of Certainty: an autobiography by Geoffrey Boycott, published this year.
How: By being Simon Cowell’s golden goose: their Midnight Memories album sold over 4m copies in 2013, and they’re reaping the rewards from this as well as extensive touring and merch the likes of which the world has never seen. You can buy 1D toothpaste. TOOTHPASTE. Anyone willing to clean their teeth with something with Harry Styles’s grubby little face and inexplicable sideways hair on it is probably lacks the cognitive wherewithal to have preserved any teeth at all. 1D are the highest-earning boyband in British music history, pipping superlative 90s hitmakers A1 to the top spot by around a billion stupid places.
#8 – Paul McCartney
How much: $71m.
In regal terms?: £45.28m.
Or: Adjusted for inflation, $35m less than Michael Jackson paid to snatch the rights to the Beatles’ back catalogue from under Macca’s nose between 1982 and 1984. The cheeky weirdo. (Original figure: $47.5m).
Or: Assuming both that a chorus contains no fewer than 4 members and – based on no evidence – that the American Green Tree Frog has the finest set of pipes, £45.28m would land you a cool 1,132,000 frog choruses.
How: S’Macca innit. Ledge. One that refuses to go away. Oh, and his new album, New – which is a new album called New – came out last year.
#9 – Calvin Harris
How much: $66m.
In English?: £42.1m.
Or: 21,050,000 copies (used) of Sash!’s groundbreaking 1997 masterpiece It’s My Life – The Album, on compact disc (case scratched).
Or: 1,169,444.4 black ‘Lowest Common Denominator’ printed hoodies (+£7.95 p&p).
Just...how: In 2013 Harris could command anything up to $1m for a single appearance, plus ongoing sales of his album 18 Months – an electro abomination featuring UK creative powerhouses Ellie Goulding and Example; an album which is to dance music what a handful of dog excrement is to a caviar hors d’oeuvre. And... you know what? Why bother. What’s the point. Dance is dead.
#10 – Toby Keith
How much: $65m.
Whut?: £41.5m.
Or: 4,611,111 3ft x 5ft American flags.
Or: 8,300,000 1-litre pots of heavy duty Swarfega rapid hand cleanser.
How: He’s described as the ‘Cowboy Capitalist’, presumably to differentiate him from the hordes of Marxist cowboys about whom we hear so much. He’s had a number 1 US hit every year of his 20-year career, owns his own label, Show Dog, owns a load of bars and restaurants, and had a multi-million dollar endorsement deal with Ford. He was also a Democrat until registering as an independent, and he’s pro gay marriage, in case you made a snap judgement about him based on his appearance, because of course you did and so did I. I’ll be honest, I’ve never heard of this fella before in my life, and my life hasn’t hitherto suffered from this. He’s loaded. That’s all we need to know.
