I can’t believe there are studies about this type of semi-obvious subject! The study, entitled ‘Dying to be famous: retrospective cohort study of rock and pop star mortality and its association with adverse childhood experiences’ by Mark A Bellis, Karen Hughes, Olivia Sharples, Tom Hennell, Katherine A Hardcastle and published in BMJ Open, concludes that pop-rock stars who had a trouble childhood, are more susceptible to die from drug-related problems or other risk-taking-heath-damaging behaviors, and that extreme wealth provide greater opportunities to engage in such behaviors. Anyone could have told you this! The pop-rock star with a troubled soul dying young from drug overdose is such a cliché.
However, there is a little more into this as there were a few unexpected discoveries: for example, pop star mortality increases relative to the general population but increases are greater in North America than in Europe, and also greater for those with solo careers than those performing in a full band. Support from bandmates could play a role of course, although the names of Kurt Cobain or Michael Hutchence among many others immediately come to mind…
In the study, the authors explained how they selected their stars, estimated their adverse childhood experiences, measured their point of fame, and calculated their survival by comparing it to the general population: for example, Elvis Presley was matched to the survival probabilities of 21-year-old white men in 1955 in the US.
In the findings, 47.2% of stars who died from substance abuse or other risk-related causes were found to have a history of childhood trauma, and of course the amount of childhood trauma was highly correlated with death induced by these same risk-taking behaviors.
At the end, the study demonstrates that pop-rock stars have less chance to survive than the general population and some possible explanation for the difference between North America and Europe (especially after 25 years postfame) could be due to many factors such as more access to drugs, longer performing careers, and less access to health care? It’s definitively not easy to be an American pop star.