U2 2001's Top Touring Act

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Having played eighty shows across the U.S. this past year, U2 are the top concert earners for 2001, bringing home $109.7 million according to concert trade publication Pollstar. The Elevation Tour was in support of last year's critically acclaimed All That You Can't Leave Behind.

"It would be amazing to have a show that had a really simply straightforward rock & roll band and then to take that somewhere else and into some sort of extraordinary moment visually," the Edge told Rolling Stone last October, while the Elevation was still in the planning stages. The stripped down philosophy -- in stark contrast to the band's lavish Pop Mart tour of 1997 -- paid off, as the Elevation Tour is also the second best-selling tour of all time. The Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge tour is still the highest grossing at $121.2 million.

Following U2 on the list of 2001's highest-grossing tour is 'N Sync, who played forty-three shows this year and took in $86.6 million, besting their own numbers from last year when they took home $76.4 million; the Backstreet Boys who played a whopping ninety-eight shows this year and took home $82.1 million; the Dave Matthews Band (fifty-one shows, $60.5 million); and Elton John/Billy Joel (thirty-one shows, $57.2 million). Rounding out the top ten are Madonna ($54.7 million), Aerosmith ($49.3 million), Janet Jackson ($42.1 million), Eric Clapton ($36.6 million) and Neil Diamond ($35.4 million).

Overall concert ticket sales reached $1.75 billion, with the average ticket price at $47.66, both figures slightly higher than last year's $1.7 billion and $43.75.

7. Incredible Moses Leroy, Electric Pocket Radio (Ultimatum): This young, African-American singer-songwriter-producer-multi-instrumentalist knows pop as well as he does his bedroom studio. A major talent waiting to explode.

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

More Song Stories entries »

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