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The boss is now officially a billionaire.
Bruce Springsteen, who became a working-class voice in rock and roll with songs like “Badlands,” “Hungry Heart” and “Bulldogs,” is now worth $1.1 billion, according to a “conservative” estimate by Forbes magazine.
Much of his net worth has been solidified in recent years. In 2021, Springsteen sold his music catalog to Sony for an estimated $500 million to $550 million, the largest deal ever for a single artist. Pollstar reported that The Boss sold more than 1.6 million concert tickets in 2023, generating $380 million in revenue.
Springsteen is one of the best-selling musicians of all time, having sold more than 71 million albums in the United States and more than 140 million worldwide. He has won 20 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and a special Tony Award for his critically acclaimed, stripped-down one-man show, “Springsteen on Broadway.”
Springsteen grew up in a working-class family in a coastal town in New Jersey and bought his first guitar after seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. He played in a band in high school and released his debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, in 1973. Singing about the thrills and traps of adolescence, young love, and escaping New Jersey, he had a string of hits including “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” “I’m on Fire,” and “Dancing in the Dark.” He became a folk hero, with lyrics that addressed the trials of everyday life, and his commercial success and long concert run made him one of the most important figures in American popular music.
With the E Street Band, Springsteen continues to tour the world, performing concerts that last more than three hours. Looking back at his April 6 Los Angeles performance, which was postponed from 2023 due to Springsteen’s illness, Chris Willman of Variety wrote, “The 200-minute performance was 40 minutes longer than most of his recent sets, each of which tested and exceeded what a man in his early 70s who had recently recovered from an illness should be able to accomplish. … Springsteen toured with the most bittersweet show on earth, but it eventually settled into the happiest, sometimes goofiest, and then heartbreaking again in the final encore.”