Pop music's "27 Club" is something you definitely don't want to belong to. It's a group of artists that have famously passed away at the age of 27 whose members include Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.
Tragic deaths like these have become a part of our pop culture, taking on an almost mythic quality where the legend of pop stars that died way too soon becomes almost greater than the individuals themselves. That's why it's hard to know whether pop stars really do pass away much younger than the rest of us or if it's just one of those instances where a few high-profile cases comes to characterize an entire industry.
Well, the "The 27 Club" itself is really more shrouded in myth than scientific fact, describing a slew of famous musicians that coincidentally died at that age. It only entered the popular lexicon in 1994 after Cobain took his own life at 27.
However, it seems like pop stars really do die much younger than the general population, and this isn't a coincidence. It's fact.
Dianna Kenny, a professor of psychology and music at the University of Sydney in Australia, recently examined if pop stars die much younger than the rest of us, and if so, why. She anaylzed the average age of death for more than 12,000 pop musicians who died by suicide, homicide and non-intentional injury or accident since 1950. She then compared that data to U.S. population averages by sex and decade.
As Kenny wrote in her report, "all is not well in pop music land." She found that pop stars live roughly 25 years fewer than the general U.S. population. Pop stars are also five to 10 times more likely to die from accidental death and have between a two and seven times greater chance of dying from suicide. Homicide rates were also up to eight times greater for pop stars than the general population.
Kenny says the pop music scene is to blame for the disproportionate amount of pop star deaths. The pop music industry "valorises outrageous behaviour and the acting out of aggressive, sexual and destructive impulses that most of us dare only live out in fantasy," Kenny wrote.
The good news is that the percentage of pop star deaths by homicide and suicide have been decreasing since the 1990s, so maybe that means pop music has been cleaning up its act in the past couple of decades. However, as anyone with Internet access knows, it definitely doesn't look like that's the case.
[H/T Quartz]
Photo: Frank Micelotta / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
