One Death is a Death Too Many
After a spate of artists dying in the last few years, I wanted to see if musical tragedy was more common than ever before.
I’ve been thinking about death a lot. Probably more than most 28-year-olds. Luckily, I’m not thinking about death because I’m dying. I’m thinking about death because it’s factored into many topics I’ve been researching. Stuff like the 65th anniversary of Buddy Holly’s tragic passing and the greatest swan song albums of all-time. Nevertheless, my fixation began with a question from a reader:
Why did so many artists die in their prime in the 1960s and 1970s (and many at the same age of 27)? Coincidence, hard living, or J. Edgar Hoover conspiracy to take down counter culture? - Tim
I answered this query in a recent mailbag, but I knew it deserved a longer response than the couple of paragraphs that I wrote. So, today we’re going to dive deep into this dismal topic and try to understand what we can learn about a musical life by studying its end. As a warning, this piece contains mention of violence and suicide.
To the Musician Dying Young
First it was Juice Wrld. When the rapper overdosed in December 2019, he was already a star. In fact, his moody anthem “Lucid Dreams” was already six times platinum. But he was on the verge of something bigger. 21-years-old and dripping with talent, he was gone.
Then it was Pop Smoke. Just two months after Juice Wrld’s tragic death, the gravely-voiced rapper was gunned down in a house he was renting in Hollywood Hills. At the time, he was pushing drill music into the mainstream. “He could have been one of the all-time greats,” my cousin John has repeatedly said to me. We’ll never know. Pop Smoke was 20-years-old when he was killed.
As somebody who works for a music streaming service, I remember these deaths vividly. Both felt like they brought the music world to a standstill. Two young, talented artists dying weeks apart just as they were reaching the height of their powers. The worst part was that it felt like part of a larger trend. In the last 15 years, so many artists have met their end way too soon. Amy Winehouse. Avicci. Mac Miller. Lil Peep. XXXTentacion. Sophie. The list goes on.
Then again, this tragic tale basically gets played out in each generation. Look at the popular stars of any decade in the last hundred years and you can find a handful dying before they turn 40. So, maybe the deaths of Juice Wrld and Pop Smoke were just another chapter in a depressing age-old tale. Or maybe not. Maybe between COVID-19, the opioid epidemic, pervasive loneliness, and a society-wide mental health crisis, more artists are dying young than ever before.
To investigate this concern, I turned to Wikipedia. The collaborative encyclopedia maintains lists of musician deaths from 1950 through the present day. By aggregating those lists, we can see if more notable musicians are dying young.
When looking at raw death counts, notable musicians dying before their 40th birthday happened most frequently in the 1990s. Luckily, the last two decades have actually been the least grim since the 1960s.
Total deaths can be misleading, though. The world population has grown substantially since the 1950s. Furthermore, lifespans have increased, there are more people releasing music than ever before, and the 2020s are not complete. We should also look at percentage of notable young musicians dying compared to the total population of notable musicians dying to account for some of these factors.
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