Rock Stars Die Young Shock
By Helen Potter
If your lifelong dream is to be a rock star, you might want to start reconsidering – a new study suggests your lifelong dream might mean a lifeshort reality.Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health has compared the longevity of musical stars once they had achieved chart success with that of the general population, matched for age, sex and ethnicity etc etc. It found that pop stars had twice the chance of dying young. Unsurprisingly, long-term drug or alcohol problems were responsible for more than one in four of the deaths.
More worryingly for anyone about the hit the big time, musicians were most likely to bite the dust within five years of becoming famous. Of the 100 stars that died between 1956 and 2005 (out of the 1050 surveyed) the average age of death for North Americans was 42 and for Europeans a measly 35 years old. The Europeans bounced back though, as after 25 years in the business their life expectancy returned to normal, unlike their American counterparts who continued to have higher death rates.
Some songsters' untimely demises
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