SYDNEY,
It's long been said
that pop stars live fast and die young, but a new Australian study has
added scholarly credibility to the adage, finding that US musicians die
up to 25 years earlier than the general population.
"This
is clear evidence that all is not well in pop music land," said the
University of Sydney's Dianna Kenny, who analysed the deaths of 12,665
predominantly male American musicians between 1950 and June this year.
Kenny
believes the study is the first of its kind in capturing the lifespans
of all popular artists over the seven decades, with her research looking
at musicians across a wide range of genres from jazz to Christian pop
to punk.
The psychology and music professor found that
pop stars' accidental death rates were between five and 10 times greater
than the general US population, while suicide rates were between two
and seven times higher.
Homicide rates were up to eight times greater than the wider population, she added.
THE 27 CLUB
The
study also found that "across the seven decades studied, popular
musicians' lifespans were up to 25 years shorter than the comparable US
population", she said.
As such, Kenny found that while
the lifespans of the two groups have been rising over the years, male
pop musicians had an average age of death of between 55 to 60 in the
past decade while the general population had an average age of just
above 75.
Female pop musicians had an average age of
death of just over 60, unlike the wider population which had a lifespan
of above 80, the study showed.
A 2011 Queensland
University of Technology study debunked the myth of the "27 Club", where
rock 'n' rollers succumb to their lifestyles while in their 27th year,
but limited its research to only artists who had a No. 1 album in the
British charts between 1956 and 2007.
Similarly,
another study published by Liverpool John Moores University in England —
which was published in the British Medical Journal in 2012 — had a
narrower focus, examining the deaths of 1,489 rock and pop stars from
North America and Europe who became famous between 1956 and 2006.
The
Liverpool John Moores University researchers found then that the
musicians' mortality increased relative to the general population over
time after they become famous.
Kenny said more work
would be needed to confirm her initial results, but that the data showed
the pop music industry needed to do more to support the young musicians
they were profiting from.
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