Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Celebrity Net Worth, Music
Jen Thomas
Charlie Simpson shot to fame as part of pop-punk trio Busted and went on to form a rock band and release albums as a solo artist, but how much is he really worth?
He’s come a long way since leaping in the air clad in uniform for ‘That’s What I Go To School For’, and to be fair, ‘Year 3000’ is still a certified banger. Charlie clocked up the royalties alongside bandmates Matt Willis and James Bourne by bucking the trend for boy bands and played their own instruments. He then formed a heavier band called Fightstar, before going solo and then eventually rejoining Busted.
It’s reported that in 2022 Charlie has a cool £1.5 million in the bank, but some figures claim between £4-6 million for the musician. Not bad, considering his career started after he took a chance and replied to a magazine advert. Busted shot to fame in 2000, and Charlie soon became a fan favourite (despite many jokes about his famously bushy eyebrows.)
Busted sold more than five million records and also won BRIT Awards and Record Of The Year, after releasing their self-titled debut in 2002, and ‘A Present For Everyone’ in 2003.
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That same year, Charlie started to express frustration with the pop nature of their songs, saying he wanted to perform heavier music and hated the school uniform and jokey lyrics.
He met his future Fightstar bandmates at a party, where they ended up covering Rage Against The Machine and deciding to write songs together.
Charlie said in an interview that he’d had "all of this creativity pent up inside and I just needed to vent it somewhere, and I was writing a lot of songs but I couldn't play them, because I didn't have anyone to play them with" before breaking the hearts of Busted fans in 2005 when they split up.
Over his musical career, Charlie has seen ten of his albums chart in the top 40, and achieved four number one singles with Busted and two top 20 singles with Fightstar.
He also formed a side project called Once Upon A Dead Man with his brothers, Will and Edd Simpson and their friend Simon Britcliff.
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Happy to hop around from genre to genre, Simpson then went solo with an acoustic album in 2006 called ‘Young Pilgrim’ and a follow-up called ‘Long Road Home’ in 2014, and ‘Little Hands’ in 2016, and ‘Hope Is A Drug’ in 2022.
In 2010, Charlie gave an interview that would come back to haunt him after rumours spread that Busted would reform for £1 million, with him insisting: “I want to make it unequivocally clear that I have no interest what-so-ever in re-joining Busted and I never will.” Oops. Famous last words.
Fast-forward to 2015, ten years after the group disbanded, and Charlie had a major change of heart (and very forgiving bandmates) as Busted announced they were reuniting.
Some cynics claimed the reunion must have meant the money was running dry for Charlie to return despite his insistence otherwise. Fans were thrilled to have them back, and Busted sold a whopping 100,000 tickets in the first hour of the tour going on sale. Since reuniting, the band have written and released two more albums, which charted at number 2 and number 1.
He bizarrely also started a Twitter row with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, after he made a snide remark about a forthcoming film of his. Our money will always be on The Rock, fwiw.
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Charlie is married to Anna Barnard, and they have two children together, Arlo and Jago. Charlie has recently been raising awareness of the dangers of secondary drowning, following a scare with his eldest son on holiday.