There’s a well-established part of the popular music canon that mythologises the ’27 Club’. That oddly numerically-aligned group of famous artists who all died at age 27.
Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all passed away at that particular age. While scientific research has disproven that 27 is in any way a statistically relevant age for the passing of musicians, the notion of ‘live fast, die young’ is persistent.
Musicians and other music professionals may not be statistically dying at that specific same age, but it does transpire that they are at an increased danger of an early death, with one study finding American musicians’ lifespans 25 years shorter on average than the general population. Alarming stuff.
