It's not unusual for musicians to be knighted

Inasmuch as Sir Tom Jones is on top of the British charts right now, I figured I'd go back and look at his royal history. He was actually knighted in March 2006:

Singer Tom Jones has been knighted at Buckingham Palace for services to music.

He was invested as Thomas Woodward, his real name and the one under which he began singing for relatives as a boy in the south Wales valleys in the 1940s....

The 65-year-old, who first met the Queen at a Royal Charity performance in 1966, was accompanied by his son, daughter and granddaughter when he arrived to pick up his award.

The account above was from the BBC. StarBlogs took a different approach:

In a solemn ceremony yesterday, the Queen of England knighted singer Tom Jones at Buckingham Palace making him a Knight of the British Empire. Then she threw her underwear at him.

Oh shush, you silly Brits. Of course she didn't REALLY do that.

(But she wanted to.)

The Welsh singing star is not the first musician to be knighted in Britain. Here is a selection of other musicians, excerpted from this list:

Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), kt. 1883
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), kt. 1911, OM 1911, GCVO 1933, bt 1931

Somehow, the list cited above didn't get around to mentioning some more...ahem...popular musicians, such as Elton John, Mick Jagger, and Paul McCartney, all of whom have been noted for musical, business, and charitable contributions.