Iconic Musicians Who Are Surprisingly Poor

Popular musicians are essentially walking money-printing machines. They sell millions of records, routinely take inescapable radio hits to the top of the pop chart, and perform in front of thousands of screaming fans in packed stadiums, all as a matter of course. That generates a lot of income for a lot of people, from record labels to concert promoters to lawyers to roadies.

And yet, rock and pop stardom doesn't necessarily guarantee financial stability for the acts themselves. Musicians can be severely mistreated by their record labels, and bad contracts, poor financial management, horrible life choices, and getting on the wrong side of luck can all help in the decay of the mass wealth accrued from musical success — if it were ever amassed at all, that is. Some music stars even die penniless. Here are some of the biggest names across classic rock, pop, R&B, country, and indie music who logically should be fairly wealthy at this point, but, owing to various and critical factors, just don't have the star bank accounts to go along with their star reputations. These well-known musicians are surprisingly strapped for cash.

In the 1990s, Ryan Adams helped create the genre of alternative country with his acclaimed band Whiskeytown. Along with a prolific solo output, Adams lent his sound to other musicians, collaborating in a behind-the-scenes capacity with Tim McGraw, Willie Nelson, and John Mayer, as well as offering his services as a mentor to several younger, aspiring female musicians.

By 2019, seven women — including indie rock star Phoebe Bridgers and Adams' ex-wife, Mandy Moore — had come forward with allegations against Adams, sometimes relating to his offer to help with their careers with the expectation that a sexual relationship would develop in return. Adams denied allegations of grooming, coercion, psychological abuse, and public and private harassment.

Immediately after the accusations, Blue Note/Capitol Records negated its contract with Adams and canceled the release of three albums. Promoters called off a concert tour, his management dumped him, and Adams couldn't find much production or songwriting work. By 2021, Adams faced financial ruin. "So I'm losing my life's work, and my dream of who I am, my ability to provide for myself," he lamented to Los Angeles Magazine. In a series of Instagram posts, a panicked Adams begged for forgiveness. "I'm months from losing my label, studio and my home," he wrote (via Variety). "I'm 46 and scared I'm gonna be living in my sister's basement. If you are a label and interested please let me know."

The 1970s was a golden age of teen idols: conventionally attractive and highly marketable young men hired to sing songs and pose for photographs so as to sell records and merchandise to impressionable youth. From mid-1977 to late 1979, arguably the most popular teen idol around was Leif Garrett, a conventionally attractive teenager who made the variety show rounds and scored hits with covers of well-known pop standards like "Surfin' USA" and "Runaround Sue" and light disco tunes including "I Was Made for Dancin'."

The tragic real-life story of Leif Garrett took the once mega-famous star down a road of personal and professional ruin. By 1980, audiences had moved on to the next fad act, and Garrett was washed up before he was 20. He was arrested multiple times for drug possession and attempted rehabilitation programs several times, not always successfully. By 2001, he filed for personal bankruptcy, unable to pay his bills or $76,000 credit card debt with his income, a $1,000 monthly allowance from his mother. As of 2025, Garrett's personal net worth was reportedly somewhere in the $10,000 range.

In September 2021, R&B and pop superstar R. Kelly was convicted on a slew of charges including racketeering, exploitation, and illegal sexual activity. Nine months later, Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Around that time came another revelation: that Kelly was deeply in debt, and the fortune he'd gathered as one of the most consistent hitmakers of the previous three decades — he'd moved 75 million albums over the years — had disappeared.

During preliminary court proceedings, Kelly's lawyers suggested that their client was broke. In 2019, one attorney asked for the musician's $1 million bond to be cut down because he couldn't afford to pay that sum. "This is someone who should be wealthy at this stage of his career," Steve Greenberg said (via the Omaha World-Herald), blaming a series of terrible business arrangements. "He really doesn't have any money at this point." A year later, Kelly's lawyers suggested that because Kelly owed the IRS nearly $2 million in unpaid back taxes, he was in no financial position to flee the country if released. At the time of his sentencing, Kelly's net worth was in the range of minus $2 million.

When KISS was one of the biggest hard rock bands and touring acts on the planet in the 1970s, Ace Frehley handled lead guitar duties. Known as the "Space Ace" for his stage character (indicated by the band's famous makeup gimmick), Frehley contributed to albums that sold more than 20 million copies, and he earned substantial royalty payments both before and after the messed up reality of KISS, and numerous disputes, led to his departure in 1982.

When the original KISS lineup reunited for three concert tours in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Frehley was paid on a per-show basis, which reportedly added up to about $18 million altogether. Just about a decade later, Frehley found himself in dire financial straits. In 2013, his mortgage lender foreclosed on the guitarist's home in Westchester County, New York, over failure to make payments for two years. He'd paid off just $35,000 of the $735,000 property, and also hadn't paid $20,000 in locally assessed taxes in 2011 and 2012. By 2024, Frehley couldn't mount an international tour to promote his album "10,000 Volts" because he couldn't leave the country. "I owe the IRS a couple of hundred grand, and they just instituted a new law that if you owe more than $50,000, they won't renew your passport," Frehley told Chaos Zine.

A protege of pop-R&B producer and songwriter Babyface, powerfully voiced soul and torch-song crooner Toni Braxton made her debut on her mentor's soundtrack for the 1992 movie "Boomerang" with the hit "Love Shoulda Brought You Home." A year later, Braxton's self-titled debut album exploded with smashes, including "Another Sad Love Song" and "Breathe Again." Braxton reached No. 1 in 1996 with both "You're Makin' Me High" and "Un-Break My Heart."

But due to the singer's complicated and draconian first recording deal, she took home $1,972 in royalties against $170 million in revenue for her label. "What happens is they give you advancement on the next record and then the next record," Braxton told ABC News, explaining that all the expenses of her career — like music video production and studio recording fees — were deducted from her cut. "So you kind of stay in debt in that sense."

That severe lack of income, coupled with Braxton's spending habits on housewares, art, and luxury items, led to the musician filing for bankruptcy in 1998. Braxton was financially stable by 2000, but then her next albums sold poorly. In 2010, Braxton initiated bankruptcy proceedings again, and she sold her Nevada home as a result. In 2012, Braxton's mansion in Duluth, Georgia, was taken by a bank through foreclosure.

Individually, the members of Toto played on thousands of recordings for other artists — the band formed out of the Los Angeles session musician community. The radio-friendly pop-rock band hit the top 5 with its first single, "Hold the Line," in 1978, setting a course for mainstream popularity. Altogether, Toto sold more than 14 million albums, with about a third of that coming from 1982's "Toto IV," an Album of the Year Grammy winner that generated the band's most successful songs, "Africa" and "Rosanna."

One of the most frustrating chapters in the tragic real life story of Toto: The hits stopped coming, and the record sales started to decline in the mid-1980s. The band called it quits in 2008. and as part of the split, ordered an audit of royalty records held by its label, Sony. Members of Toto subsequently filed a federal suit against Sony, citing breach of contract and asking for $605,000 in damages to account for unpaid royalties. Sony filed a request for dismissal, and in 2014 a judge decided that the company didn't owe Toto anything extra. All the debt incurred from the legal action forced Toto to record a new album and head out on a support tour. "It was born out of litigation," member Steve Lukather told Smashing Interviews.

Multiple national labels wanted Tommy James and the Shondells in 1966, but the band affiliated itself with the smaller Roulette Records. The head of that company, Morris Levy, had told the other labels to back off. Levy, reportedly deep into New York's organized crime world, routinely threatened or enacted violence against any perceived threat, up to and including those coming from his label's acts. Country-pop act Jimmie Rodgers asked Levy for nine years' worth of royalty payments; Rodgers was beaten almost to death in December 1967.

Roulette gave James full creative freedom. "Getting paid was different — that was like taking a bone from a Rottweiler," James told Classic Rock. Instead of paying royalties, Levy would give James bags of cash when he needed money. It's under this system that James racked up a string of massive hits in the late 1960s, including "Hanky Panky," "Mony Mony," and "Crimson and Clover."

Well aware of Levy's Mafia activities, James remained on Roulette into the 1970s but finally had enough because he hadn't been properly paid. With his accountant, James went to Roulette's contracted record label pressing plant and audited their records. "I was owed between $30 and $40 million," James said. Levy responded by threatening to murder James, a threat the singer took seriously. Before Levy died in 1990, he sold Roulette to Warner Bros, allowing James to recoup a fraction of his royalties. "Vast sums were still owing which I didn't see," he said.

Creed's brand of anguished, turgid spiritual rock captured the rock radio airwaves and CD buyers' dollars in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The group, led by the gravelly voiced belting of frontman Scott Stapp, sold more than 30 million albums, took the power ballad "With Arms Wide Open" to No. 1 on the pop chart, and landed a couple of Grammy Award nominations. Creed officially split up in 2004 due to personal and professional disagreements between guitarist Mark Tremonti and Stapp. Every original member except the singer moved on to a new band called Alter Bridge

What happened to Stapp? He released a million-selling solo album and reunited with Creed in 2009. And then he apparently went broke. "Right now, I'm living in a Holiday Inn, by the grace of God, because there's been a couple of weeks where I had to live in my truck," Stapp said in a 2014 Facebook video (via the Tampa Bay Times). "I had no money, not even for gas or food." Stapp explained that he performed a self audit and claimed that he discovered huge sums of money were missing and that he was owed a fortune in unpaid royalties, even though as late as 2013, he'd received $1.5 million from his record label. He also claimed that he was being unfairly targeted by the IRS. A few days later, Stapp started a campaign to crowdsource $480,000 to make a new album and write a book.

Sly Stone, with his expansive backing band the Family Stone, defined what pop would sound like in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Equal parts soul, funk, and rock, Sly and the Family Stone recorded joyful, utopian hippie-era anthems including "Dance to the Music," "Everyday People," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," and "I Want to Take You Higher." The collective moved about 8 million albums before the band began to fall apart in the 1970s after Stone's substance use occupied his attention. In 1983, Stone was arrested on a charge of cocaine possession, and he mostly retreated from public view.

Stone lived in a lavish house in Northern California's wine country (with its own vineyard) as late as 2007, but by 2011 he was essentially unhoused and residing in a van. He nearly received a windfall in 2015, when a Los Angeles court decided that Stone was owed $5 million in unpaid songwriting royalties. Later that year, a judge reversed the decision after discovering that Stone had signed away the royalties in 1989 for a 50% ownership stake in a production company.

Sigur Rós took rock music to strange, spooky, and mystical new places. One of the most famous and successful musical acts to ever emerge from Iceland, the experimental, deconstructive group made big commercial breakthroughs in Europe and the U.S. with well-received albums like "Takk...," "Valtari," and "Agaetis byrjun."

The band generated a lot of income in the 2010s in particular, and according to Icelandic government authorities, it failed to pay taxes on those earnings. In 2019, a district prosecutor in Iceland completed a three-year investigation and filed an indictment against the band alleging tax evasion to the tune of 151 million Icelandic krona (equivalent to about $1 million) dating back to 2011 to 2014. Sigur Rós blamed its accountant for the major financial discrepancy, but courts still seized and froze the musicians' assets, including apartments and houses. The band was cleared of wrongdoing in 2021, but the decision was later reversed, with prosecutors focusing their case only on frontman Jónsi Birgisson. Those charges were dropped in 2023.

Randy Travis, a country music traditionalist who nevertheless became a major star in his genre in the slick and modern 1980s and 1990s, almost lost everything in 2013. He developed an upper respiratory illness that led to viral cardiomyopathy, a condition that can cause permanent heart damage or death. Travis recovered briefly but then suffered congestive heart failure that led to a stroke. The singer underwent brain surgery and needed two years of rehabilitation to regain basic functions.

Unable to play the guitar, sing, or speak like he once could, Travis had lost his main source of income. And then he learned that his financial safety nets had not been set in place. Travis was under the impression that his management had filed a hefty disability insurance policy to provide him with money should he ever lose his voice. There was no such agreement. Royalty checks on his past work hadn't arrived in years because he hadn't sold past the advances or made good on loans taken out against future earnings. Throughout his career, Travis sold 23 million albums, but little of the financial gains had made their way to the performer.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).