Beyoncé and Jay-Z are rolling in “Dead Presidents.”
The reigning pop queen and her superstar rap mogul husband topped Forbes‘ list of the highest-paid celebrity couples of 2016 with a combined $107.5 million in earnings over the past year, the outlet reported Monday.
The Lemonade singer came in at No. 34 on the finance publication’s annual Celebrity 100 list — a list of the world’s top-earning celebrities of the year — with a $54 million haul, while Jay-Z finished just behind her at No. 36 with $53.5 million.
Beyoncé’s Black Lives Matter-inspired visual album, Lemonade, was one of just three albums this year to sell one million copies (the others were Drake’s Views and Adele’s 25). After premiering on HBO, Lemonade was released exclusively on Tidal, the streaming service she co-owns with Jay-Z and other artists.
Meanwhile, Jay-Z earns his money from his entertainment company, Roc Nation, and his alcohol brands, Armand de Brignac champagne and D’Ussé cognac.
The slight discrepancy in income between the pair could stem partially from the fact that Beyoncé played 17 more concerts over the year than her husband, who played just two in total.
The $107.5 million is in pre-tax income, Forbes notes, so the couple likely took home substantially less once Uncle Sam took his cut. Still, just one other celebrity couple each made the publication’s Celebrity 100 list — Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Gisele Bundchen, who took in $44 million and $30.5 million, respectively.
As for the highest-earning non-married celebrity: that honor goes to Taylor Swift, who earned a staggering $170 million over the last year alone. Swift’s 1989 World Tour shattered box office records, and the singer has also done promotional work for brands like Apple and Diet Coke.
If Swift had stayed together with her DJ boyfriend Calvin Harris (No. 21 with $63 million), they would have been the world’s highest-grossing celebrity couple instead of Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
Swift also beat boy band One Direction (No. 2, $110 million), author James Patterson (No. 3, $93 million), Dr. Phil (No. 4, $88 million), soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo (No. 5, $88 million), actor-comedian Kevin Hart (No. 6, $87.5 million), Howard Stern (No. 7, $85 million), soccer player Lionel Messi (No. 8, $81.5 million), fellow pop star Adele (No. 9, $80.5 million) and radio host Rush Limbaugh (No. 10, $79 million) to take the stop spot.
The full Celebrity 100 list will be released Tuesday.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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