You’ve probably heard of the 27 club: a group of musicians and singers who have all died at the age of 27. Many famous artists including Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse have died at this young age and it has built up something of a mythology around it. Now Dianna Theodora Kenny, professor of psychology and music at the University of Sydney has studied the deaths of 12,665 musicians to build up a picture of the causes of death and at what age they were when they died to see if there is any truth to the concept of the 27 club.

The public seems to have a pre-determined notion of how the majority of artists seem to die when they do so prematurely, usually assuming that causes such as overdose and suicide are more common. Is this really the case though? Theodora’s study aimed to work out the most common causes of deaths of artists in a period between 1950 and June 2014 compared to the general population of the US.

Findings were broken down between causes of death and also broken down between the genre of music the artist was associated with. The graph below shows the results of the first part of the study, comparing deaths of musicians with deaths in the general public.

The graphs show that musicians are indeed more likely to die either in an accident, by committing suicide or in a homicide than the general public. This is bad news for all the musicians out there but they need not fear too much as the study went on to explore the concept of the 27 club. It was found that musicians are not more likely to die at the age of 27 and in fact, more have died at the age of 28 anyway. Better news for musicians is that the most common age for them to die at is 56, giving them much more time to live the rock and roll lifestyle.

It was thought that the reason we hold the incorrect belief that more musicians die at 27 is that the ones that did die at that age were simply more popular and that meant that their deaths were more prominent in the media.

After the study quashed that romanticised notion, it went on to look at the causes of death that the most common of musicians from a certain genre of music. The results of this are below.

The findings are intriguing although they do seem to perpetuate many stereotypes including that rappers are more likely to be violently murdered. The overall conclusion of the study seems to be that being in the music industry can be extremely hazardous for your health.

By Sarah Marie Jones