For those who crave attention, be careful what you wish for: Seeking fame as a soloist actually increases the risk of early death, researchers say.
Their analysis of singers from Europe and the US found that those who achieved fame died on average almost five years earlier than less famous singers, suggesting that fame itself was the main driver, rather than lifestyle and work demands.
The analysis found that solo singers who gained fame fared worse than lead singers in established groups, presumably because they were more insecure, faced more pressure and had less emotional support during the ups and downs of rock star life.
“This is worrying because it indicates that famous musicians are indeed at risk of premature death,” said Michael Dufner, a professor in the department of personality, psychology and diagnostics at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany and senior author of the study. On average, their lives were 4.6 years shorter, he said.
Every decade has its own list of stars whose lives were bright but short: the 2010s alone include Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Prince, George Michael and Keith Flint. But when famous singers die young, media attention increases. For this reason, examples came easily to mind, Dufner said. “What about rock stars who live comfortably into old age?”
To find out whether fame affects the risk of early death, Dufner and his colleagues identified 324 famous soloists or soloists and matched them with lesser-known musicians of the same age, gender, nationality, ethnicity and musical genre. To ensure a reasonable number of deaths, they focused on artists who worked between 1950 and 1990.
Most of the singers were white rockers from the USA. Only 19% were black and 16.5% were women. The oldest was born in 1910, the youngest in 1975. More than half of them were in groups.
When the researchers looked at who died and at what age, a clear trend emerged: Famous singers typically lived to age 75, while their lesser-known counterparts lived to age 79 on average. Membership in a band was associated with a 26% lower risk of death compared with a solo career, but overall, famous singers were still 33% more likely to die in the years studied than lesser-known singers.
The increased risk of death emerged only after singers achieved fame, fueling suspicions that fame itself was a cause of early death. Details published in Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health.
Dufner said more work needs to be done to understand how fame can drive singers to an early grave. Endless public scrutiny, loss of privacy, public pressure and the normalization of alcohol and drug abuse are likely to take their toll, he said. But there may be other factors, such as temperament or bad childhood experiences driving people who have already taken risks in search of fame.
Asked what today's stars should do, Dufner said it was important to understand how unhealthy the touring lifestyle can be, with drugs readily available and deep isolation from close friends and family. He said: “A good countermeasure against this would be to take regular retreats,” meet with family and old friends and “take a critical look at your lifestyle.”
Dr Sally Ann Gross, a reader at the University of Westminster and co-author of the 2020 book Can Music Make You Sick?: Measuring the Cost of Musical Ambition, said the work explores the hyper-competitive world of music production, now dominated by social media and where fame “isolates one”. She added: “It would seem that fame is toxic.”
“We can certainly do better, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” she said. “There are a lot of people in the music industry, from music managers to music executives, who are genuinely trying to improve working conditions and the environment. However, fame brings different challenges. You can't just go to rehab to kick the habit – that's out of the hands of the artist.”
