Paul McCartney's net worth rises as he joins select club thanks to Beyonce influence
Paul McCartney was the first UK musician to be named a billionaire last year and the Beatles icon's net worth has continued to rise
Beatles legend Paul McCartney's wealth has seen a significant uptick after he became the first British musician to join the billionaire club last year. The Sunday Times Rich List, published on Friday, reveals that 82-year-old Paul, whose influence helped create the name of an iconic punk band name, saw his fortune swell from £1 billion in 2024 to £1.025 billion in 2025, as reported by M.E. N.
His 'Got Back' world tour in 2024, which wrapped up with shows in Manchester and London in December, played a big part in boosting his wealth. Another major contributor was Beyoncé's cover of 'Blackbird', a song McCartney - whose iconic status will be furthered with a musical about the Beatles in development for London's West End - wrote in 1968 about the US Civil Rights movement, which gave him a substantial financial lift in 2024.
Renamed 'Blackbird,' Beyonce - who recently broke history with a huge achievement - featured the track on her Grammy-winning album 'Cowboy Carter.' The song debuted at number 27 on the Billboard 100 and racked up 14 million official streams and 7,000 downloads in its first week.
McCartney originally wrote the song as a tribute to the Little Rock Nine, a group of students who faced racial discrimination when they enrolled at the all-white Little Rock high school in 1957, according to the Liverpool Echo.
This incident served as a test case for a Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called in the National Guard to stop the students from entering the school. However, when federal troops were subsequently brought in to escort them, the nascent civil rights movement gained nine heroes.
In an interview with California-based radio station KCRW back in 2002, Paul shed some light on the lyrics of 'Blackbird': "I was in Scotland playing on my guitar, and I remembered this whole idea of "you were only waiting for this moment to arise" was about, you know, the black people's struggle in the southern states, and I was using the symbolism of a blackbird. It's not really about a blackbird whose wings are broken, you know, it's a bit more symbolic."
Paul delved deeper into the meaning behind the song in his 1997 biography "Many Years From Now", co-authored with Barry Miles, where he explains that the lyrics are actually about a black woman. He stated: "I had in mind a black woman, rather than a bird."
Paul wrote the song during the tumultuous era of the American civil rights movement, to which The Beatles were deeply invested. In the book, he elaborated: "Those were the days of the civil rights movement, which all of us cared passionately about, so this was really a song from me to a black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: 'Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.'".
Paul pointed out that the song also has layers of meaning, achieved by "veiling" specifics in favor of symbolism: "As is often the case with my things, a veiling took place so, rather than say 'Black woman living in Little Rock' and be very specific, she became a bird, became symbolic, so you could apply it to your particular problem."
Ringo and Paul have reconvened numerous times since The Beatles era, notable moments being during Paul's 2019 Freshen Up tour and Ringo’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2015. This particular gig served as the climax to Paul's Got Back Tour, which began in October, and featured live shows in global hotspots like Paris, Madrid, and Sao Paulo, in addition to two performances at Manchester's state-of-the-art Co-Op Live and London's iconic The O2.
Just last week, Paul was among the 400 industry titans who issued a summons to the Prime Minister to fortify UK creativity and economic growth by cracking down on AI-driven copyright infringement.
In their public appeal directed at Keir Starmer, a coalition of celebrities, filmmakers, and artistic visionaries collectively advocated for stronger protections under copyright law – the very "lifeblood" of their careers. They're pressing for an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill that would obligate technology companies to reveal their methods of using creative content to train artificial intelligence platforms.
