- Posted December 1, 2025
Famous Singers Die 4 Years Earlier Than Non-famous, Study Shows
MONDAY, Dec. 1, 2025 (HeathDay News) — Many have heard of the infamous “27 Club” — a list of music icons like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, all of whom passed away too young at age 27.
Now, new research backs up the notion that fame itself can be a killer.
According to the study, famous singers tend to die an average four years earlier than their non-famous peers.
“An elevated risk emerges specifically after achieving fame, which highlights fame as a potential temporal turning point for health risks including mortality,” wrote a team of researchers led by Johanna Hepp of University Witten Herdecke, in Germany.
They published their findings Nov. 25 in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
According to Hepp’s team, it’s long been known that, as a group, famous singers do tend to lead somewhat shorter lives than the general public.
But is that due to fame, specifically, or just the fact that they are musicians working in a tough industry?
To help answer that, the researchers compared the longevity of 648 singers, half of whom had achieved fame and half of who had not.
Each of the “star” singers was matched as closely as possible to a non-famous peer in terms of their birth year, gender, nationality, ethnicity, music genre and whether they were a solo singer or lead singer in a band.
More than four-fifths of the singers were male and 61% were from North America. Most (77%) were white while 19% were Black. Rock music dominated (65%), followed by R&B (14%) and Pop (9%).
Only artists active between 1950 and 1990 were included, and deaths were tracked to December of 2023.
The main finding: Famous singers typically lived until an average age of 75, whereas non-famous singers averaged 79 years, the study found.
The relative rise in death risk only clicked in after a singer achieved fame, and then remained steady throughout the singer’s life span.
Being a solo act was riskier: Being part of a band was linked to a 26% lower risk of death compared with going it alone, Hepp’s team found.
The researchers stressed that theirs was an observational study and can only point to associations, not cause-and-effect.
However, they note that a four-year reduction in expected life span puts fame in line with other major health risk factors, such as smoking.
While fame boosted the odds of early death among singers by 33%, smoking raises a person’s risk of early death by 34%, the researchers pointed out.
How might fame potentially hasten death?
Hepp’s group believes the answer could lie in “the unique psychosocial stress that accompanies fame, such as intense public scrutiny, performance pressure and loss of privacy. These stressors could fuel psychological distress and harmful coping behaviors, making fame a chronic burden that amplifies existing occupational risk."
But wouldn’t all the money and support staff fame brings counteract that effect?
Perhaps not, the researchers said.
“Being famous appears so detrimental that it overrides any potential benefits associated with high socioeconomic status,” they wrote. "Again, this highlights the increased vulnerability of famous individuals, suggesting a need for targeted protection and support for this population.”
More information
There's more on stress' impact on health at the American Psychological Association.
SOURCE: Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health/BMJ Group, news release, Nov. 25, 2025
