Forever immortalized as a former Beatles member, Paul McCartney is much more than just an old guard celebrity. He maintains his status as a celebrity today in England with his twenty-four number one singles to date. According to the Guinness World Records, McCartney is the most successful musician and composer in popular music history.

He holds over sixty gold discs and has sales in excess of one hundred million singles in the United Kingdom. This was during his astoundingly successful solo career when he formed Wings with his wife at the time and Denny Laine, another singer-songwriter. His song, “Yesterday” has been named the most covered song in history, by having over 2200 artists cover it since release. It has also been played on United States Television over seven million times. Next, his song, “Mull of Kintyre” was the first single in the United Kingdom to sell beyond two million copies and is, to this day, the top selling non-charity single in the UK.

Across the Atlantic, McCartney has held thirty-two number one singles in the United States according to the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Aside from his monolithic music career, Paul McCartney has generously invested a great deal of his time and money into charities advocating music education, animal rights, the hauling of seal hunting, and the elimination of Third World debt. He holds the title of one of the UK’s wealthiest people as well. It certainly wasn’t the Beatles that made Paul McCartney famous, but more likely his involvement was critical to the Beatles success which lives on today.