Fortunes of the Dead and Celebrated

Technorati tags: Humor, Halloween, Dead Celebrities, Forbes, Top Thirteen List, Music, Nirvana

So, who's your favorite dead celebrity?

With Halloween just around the corner, Forbes.com has just released their Top 13 List of Highest Earning Dead Celebrities. While the celebrities themselves are very dead, death has had an opposite effect on their earnings, are very much alive. In fact they just keep on growing. Undead fortunes, you might say.

Since the list's inception 6 years ago, for the first time, Kurt Cobain has topped the list, edging out Elvis Presley as the top-grossing dead celebrity.

The complete Lucky 13 List is as follows (figures indicate earnings in the last 12 months, all figures in USD):
1. Kurt Cobain ($50 M)
2. Elvis Presley ($42 M)
3. Charles M. Schulz ($35 M)
4. John Lennon ($24 M)
5. Albert Einstein ($20 M)
6. Andy Warhol ($19 M)
7. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) ($10 M)
8. Ray Charles ($10 M)
9. Marilyn Monroe ($8 M)
10. Johnny Cash ($8 M)
11. J.R.R. Tolkien ($7 M)
12. George Harrison ($7 M)
13. Bob Marley ($7 M)

The Forbes.com article page also runs a survey on which currently living celebrity would make it to the Top 13 list - eventually, once they're in the great beyond, of course. And the list does not include Siti, or Mawi, so don't be disappointed, okay?
(some thoughts about Kurt Cobain in the full post)

Walski's glad that Cobain's topped the list. Nirvana will always be, to Walski, one of the greatest bands ever to have emerged from the Seattle Grunge Scene.

Kurt Cobain was not only the frontman for Nirvana, but also the band's spiritual center. It's no surprise, therefore, that the surviving members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic didn't continue Nirvana, and instead went in their own musical directions.

Grohl, of course, is now the front-man and guitarist for Foo Fighters, while Novoselic has done several one-off or short-lived musical collaborations over the years.

Although Nirvana was around for only seven years (1987 - 1994), their influence on popular rock music has been quite profound, especially after Cobain's death, and the eventual disbanding. This would not have been so, if not for the prolific songwriting legacy that Cobain has left behind. Cobain died on April 5, 1994, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
(Source: Wikipedia)