The pop stars who are going for a song

Pop stars who'll sell their souls for a private party

Pop stars never used to do private gigs. They were too busy or too rich to bother. If you wanted to hire one for a private party, your best bet was a has-been band down on its luck. Nowadays, though, says Imogen Edwards-Jones in The Guardian, with record sales plunging and touring costs soaring, you can hire almost anyone: oligarch's knees-ups and footballers' weddings are perfectly acceptable ways for Grammy award winners to line their pockets.

And very rewarding it is is too: Rod Stewart and Robbie Williams cost £1m each; Amy Winehouse also pocketed £1m to serenade Roman Abramovich in Moscow; the Rolling Stones played a Texan billionaire's 60th birthday bash at the Hard Rock hotel in Las Vegas "for a sweet £3.5m"; Paul McCartney sang for an American TV executive for £500,000; Sting charged Bill Gates £250,000 to sing for his supper club.

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