Their deaths fueled the idea that 27 is a deadly age for musicians and other notable artists.
Amy Winehousethe iconoclastic singer-songwriter, was this age when she died of alcohol poisoning in 2011. Just like grunge rocker Kurt Cobain when he committed suicide in 1994 and the queen of rock’n’roll Janis Joplin when she died of a heroin overdose in 1970.
And they have lots of illustrious and tragic company — the most recent example being the actor Chance Perdomodied in a motorcycle accident in March.
For decades, the apparent phenomenon of so-called 27 Clubs captured the audience’s morbid fascination. However, time and time again, scientists have crunched the numbers and determined that the 27 Club is based more on myth than math.
A fundamental study in the medical journal BMJfor example, found that the risk of death for famous musicians in their 20s and 30s was indeed up to three times higher than that of the general public. However, in their analysis of 522 musical artists, the mortality rate for 27-year-olds – 0.57 deaths per 100 years of life lived by those in the study – was almost identical to the mortality rate for 25-year-olds. years (0.56 deaths per 100 musician-years) and for 32-year-olds (0.54 deaths per 100 musician-years).
Another study in an academic journal called Medical Problems of Performing Artists which examined the deaths of 13,195 popular musicians from various musical genres also concluded that their life expectancy was lower than that of the population as a whole. But there’s nothing particularly perilous about 27, the authors found: in fact, the riskiest years occur before musicians reach 25.
However, the legend of the Club des 27 continues to grow. Pages dedicated to the 27 members of the Club exist in 51 languages on Wikipedia, and the one in English contains 85 entries.
Today, researchers are taking a new look at the club to see what its persistence says about us as a society. Their conclusion: the Club of 27 may be a myth, but it has real cultural consequences.
Zackary Okun Dunivincomputational methodologist and cultural sociologist, said he dug into the data for one reason only: He didn’t think Club 27’s legitimacy should be dismissed out of hand simply because it lacked statistical support.
“Scientists have treated it unfairly in the past,” said Dunivin, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis. “Just because a myth has no real basis doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
Rather, he said, “myths and stories provide collective meaning. It’s how we understand the world and helps us do the things that make life interesting, feel the wonder, the mystery, the pain, the excitement, and share that with others.
Dunivin and his colleague Patrick Kaminsky at the University of Stuttgart in Germany re-examined the phenomenon using 14,517 dead pop musicians with pages on Wikipedia. As a group, these musicians were more likely to die at younger ages than hundreds of thousands of other notable deceased people who deserved a place on Wikipedia, the two men found.
Like other researchers, Dunivin and Kaminski confirmed that there was nothing particularly dangerous about being 27, according to their study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But that was only the beginning.
Dunivin wanted to establish that the 27 Club was real because it had a measurable effect. He and Kaminski focused on people in their sample who died between the ages of 25 and 40 and plotted them on a graph based on their “notability” (as measured by hits on their Wikipedia pages) and their age at the time. of their death.
In this analysis, people who died at age 27 stand out from their older and younger counterparts.
The 27 Club members ranked in the top 1 percent were 170 percent more remarkable than they would have been if they had died at a different age, Dunivin said. Likewise, other members who ranked among the top 10 percent notable became 35 percent more notable by dying at age 27, he said.
In other words, “the more famous you are, the more you benefit from the Club 27 effect,” said Dunivin, whose favorite Club 27 member is the artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat.
This effect was triggered by a historical coincidence: a series of deaths of 27-year-old musicians over a two-year period.
The first victim was Brian Jonesfounding member of the Rolling Stones who drowned in his swimming pool in 1969. Next came Jimi Hendrixan extraordinary guitarist who barbiturate overdose in 1970. Janis Joplin died a few weeks later, and Jim Morrisonthe legendary frontman of the Doors, was found dead in his bathtub in 1971.
Dunivin and Kaminski calculated the probability that four such famous people would die within two years, and all at age 27. Their estimate: about 1 in 100,000.
Such improbability is what propelled the myth of the 27 Club to prominence, and subsequent deaths — particularly that of Kurt Cobain — continue to fuel its mystique, Dunivin said.
“Even if you’re not familiar with this myth, you’re more likely to come across references to the legacy of famous 27-year-olds than at other ages,” he said. “This gives the impression that there are actually more deaths at 27 than at 26 or 28,” a perception that perpetuates the cycle.
It’s not that different from the way trails form in a park. After a few people take a particular shortcut, others see the trampled grass and follow suit. Their footsteps further wear down the grass, which reinforces the visual signal and creates a positive feedback loop.
The myth of the 27 Club may seem trivial, but in the age of Wikipedia it has value because it can be analyzed with data.
“The lesson that random events like the deaths of four musicians can influence the development of culture and history is widely applicable,” Dunivin said. “The classic example from history is the assassination of Francis Ferdinand. If the bullet deviates a little from its trajectory, the archduke survives. How might borders, cultures and industry be different if (World War I) had not happened? »
Adrian Barnettstatistician at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, is the lead author of the BMJ study that debunked the idea that 27 is a particularly deadly age for musicians. He said he found the new work compelling.
“The authors make the case that the 27 Club is a real thing because it is a thing,” said Barnett, whose main area of research is reducing hospital infections. “It’s a self-propelled phenomenon.”
And it’s not limited to pop culture, he added.
“This reminds me of some cancer clusters, where a surprising number of cancers become common knowledge, for example in a workplace for a short period of time, and then the cluster grows larger because other office workers get tested and diagnose cancers that would not have been detected without the concern caused by the initial cluster,” Barnett said. “So a set of potentially coincidental events creates a self-propelling cluster.”
Deconstructing how an idea spreads through society helps scientists understand what brings communities together or brings them together. burstDunivin said. The sum total of these ideas is our culture, which “makes our individual lives rich and fulfilling,” he said.
“I would be very disappointed if one of the consequences of writing this article was that people stopped sharing the story of the 27 Club,” he said.
