Many people get into music with the hope of becoming rich and famous. Maybe they’d better be careful about what they wish for.
A new study of singers in North America, the UK, and Europe, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, suggests that famous singers die, on average, around four years earlier than their non-famous peers. The average death age for a famous singer was 75. For everyone else in the band, it was 79. This puts being a famous singer at the equivalent health hazard of the other risks we all face. They looked 648 singers, half famous, have not-so-famous. About 84% were male (that may be a factor), and most (77% ) were white. And 65% were rock singers.
To be fair, though, the study only looked at dead singers who were active between 1950 and 1990, so things may have improved since then. Still, let’s be careful out there.
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