Mother Monster fearned twice the cash of runners up, Taylor Swift & Katy Perry
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Musician Lady Gaga performs onstage at the iHeartRadio Music Festival held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in September.
BY JIM FARBER
Lady Gaga just made her accountants as happy as her hair dressers.
According to Forbes.com’s just released Top Earning Women in Music list, the fashion-fast-forward icon pulled in double the gross of any other female pop star of the last year.
Thanks in large part to a $1.3 million nightly gross on her endless tour, Gaga hauled in $90 million in 2011, twice the tally of as her nearest competition, Taylor Swift, who can console herself with a $45 million pot.
Katy Perry came in just behind the country lass, with a $44 take, while the rest of the Top Five big female grossers includes Beyonce Knowles, with a $35 million kitty, and Rihanna with $29 million.
Gaga’s economic juggernaut comes as something of a surprise considering the relatively tepid performance of her latest CD, “Born This Way.” It has yet to break the 2 million mark after 29 weeks on the market. Sales are chugging along slowly with figures of roughly 25,000 a week. (Wednesday’s Billboard Top 200 CD list has “Born This Way” at a dull No. 38).
Forbes figures Gaga made up for the album’s performance with a rash of endorsement deals from the likes of Polaroid, Virgin Mobile, Monster Cable and PlentyOfFish.com, along with her hauls from a non-stop run of live dates.
Swift’s tally owes much to her multi-platinum albums and to grosses of over $1 million a night on tour.
Perry benefitted from five chart-stopping singles from her “Teenage Dream” CD. She’s the only artist to achieve that feat outside of Michael Jackson back in the ‘80s.
Beyonce’s relatively soft showing reflects disappointing sales for her latest CD, “4,” which has yet to go platinum after 24 weeks in play.
