A closer look
Michael Jackson famously purchased the publishing rights to the vast majority of the Beatles catalog in 1985 for forty-seven million dollars, severely damaging his close personal friendship with Paul McCartney in a hilariously ruthless display of peak music industry capitalism. McCartney had actually mentored the pop star a few years prior, casually explaining the lucrative nature of music publishing and bragging about his own corporate acquisitions, inadvertently teaching the King of Pop the exact financial strategies he would use to outbid McCartney for his own life's work. When the historic catalog hit the open market, Jackson swooped in with his massive Thriller wealth and bought the rights to Yesterday and Hey Jude out from under the very man who wrote them, leaving McCartney absolutely furious at the perceived betrayal. It stands as one of the most legendary flexes in pop culture history, proving that giving free financial advice to a fiercely competitive musical genius is an incredibly dangerous endeavor
