"The 27 Club Is a Myth, But..."

"After tracing music-world deaths since 1950 and plotting them against the wider U.S. population, Dianna Kenny found that the average male musician dies in his late 50s, compared with 75 for men outside the industry during the period.

Female musicians live a little longer—into their early 60s, but still well short of 80, the average age at death for American women over the relevant time period.

“The 27-Club hypothesis is a myth,” says Ms. Kenny, a researcher in psychology and music at the University of Sydney. “There’s no one particular age compared with the normal population that is more vulnerable.”

Her academic study isn’t the first to delve into untimely rock-star deaths, but it claims to be only one that examines as many as 12,665 musicians who have died over the past six decades."

[online.wsj.com]

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“The 27-Club hypothesis is a myth"

So ... no famous musicians have actually died at the age of 27? Wow. That's really amazing.

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It seems rather statistically obvious that the odds of not dying at 27 are better than hitting that ignominious target. However ...

Q. - Would the results be more or less identical if the criteria for "dying" were strictly limited to "death by misadventure" or suicide?

It seems to me that (aside from the rather obvious requirement that you die at the age of 27) the so-called "27 Club" almost exclusively involves that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, I'll maintain that a sufficient number of famous musicians have indeed died at the untimely age of 27 to give the notion some currency (deserved or not) ... even though it is true that there are lots of musicians who don't die at that age (and are, of course, automatically disqualified).