Pop stars climbing stairway to heaven earlier

It has 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 analyzed 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 as it covers the lifespans of all popular artists over the seven decades, with her research looking at musicians across a wide range of genres including jazz, Christian pop and punk.

The psychology and music professor found that pop stars' accidental-death rates were between five and 10 times greater than those of the general US population, while suicide rates were between two and seven times higher.

Homicide rates were up to eight times greater than in the wider population, she added.

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.

Kenny found that the life-spans of the two groups have been rising over the years. However, 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 over 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", the belief that rock 'n' rollers succumb to their lifestyles at the age of 27. The research was limited to artists who had a No. 1 album in the British charts between 1956 and 2007.

(China Daily 10/30/2014 page10)