Up: [[Myth-Making]] Created: 2025-01-25 Updated: 2025-07-01 Popular musicians are statistically more likely to [die at age 56](https://theconversation.com/the-27-club-is-a-myth-56-is-the-bum-note-for-musicians-33586) than they are at 27, but the deaths of at least 54 musicians at the age of 27 really lit up our collective imagination. Chronologically, this list runs from Alexandre Levy in 1892 to Fredo Santana in 2018. There haven’t been any since then. The [source I checked](https://www.thisisdig.com/feature/27-club-members/#:~:text=This%20chronological%20look%20at%20all,lasting%2C%20world%2Dchanging%20music.) provides a paragraph about each artist, their cause of death, and the added bonus of a YouTube clip of a ‘must hear’ song from their repertoire. As you might expect, there are plenty of deaths from drug overdoses or suicides. But there are also deaths due to cancer; accidents — drowning, car, plane; heart attack, and murder. Not all of the deaths at age 27 belong to musicians. There’s also the artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and actors Jonathan Brandis and Anton Yelchin. But it’s the deaths of the ‘big six’ popular musicians that really drove the naming of the 27 Club and the mythology that surrounds it. The Big Six are Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix in the early 1970’s, Kurt Cobain in 1994, and Amy Winehouse in 2011. People noticed and commented on the four deaths in the early 1970’s, talked about it more after Cobain’s death in 1994, then even more after Winehouse. We gave the age 27 significance. We made it real, even though it isn’t statistically true. An excellent article in [The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/the-27-club-isnt-true-but-it-is-real-a-sociologist-explains-why-myths-endure-and-how-they-shape-reality-242693) explains how and why. > [!Orbit] Zackary Okun Dunivin, *The 27 Club isn’t true, but it is real* in ‘The Conversation’ > It wasn’t just their age. It was the common thread of musical genius, countercultural influence and the tragic allure of lives cut short by a cocktail of fame, drug use and the struggle of being human. The narrative is not just compelling but almost mystical in its synchronicity. It comes down to a very human need to find patterns in randomness. Maybe that’s what allows us to feel that we have a degree of control over our lives. I remember watching an interview with my guy, [[Kris Kristofferson]], where he said that he had grown up with the belief that, as a musician, he would *Live hard, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse*. While [[Metaphorical Truth is False But Useful]], I’m grateful that he managed to shed that idea.