All is not well in pop music land!
Popular musicians in the US die up to 25 years earlier than the general population, with suicide rates among the performers between two and seven times greater, a "disturbing" new study has found.
Professor Dianna Kenny, from The University of Sydney, conducted a study of 12,665 performing pop musicians from all popular genres who died between 1950 and June this year. Out of the musicians studied, 11,478 were male.
The results of the study were "disturbing", according to Kenny.
Across the seven decades studied, popular musicians' lifespans were up to 25 years shorter than the comparable US population.
Accidental death rates were between five and 10 times greater. Suicide rates were between two and seven times greater; and homicide rates were up to eight times greater than the US population.
"This is clear evidence that all is not well in pop music land," Kenny said.
"The pop music 'scene' fails to provide boundaries and to model and expect acceptable behaviour. It actually does the reverse - it valorises outrageous behaviour and the acting out of aggressive, sexual and destructive impulses that most of us dare only live out in fantasy," Kenny wrote in an article published by 'The Conversation'.
The music industry needs to consider these findings to discover ways of recognising and assisting young musicians in distress, according to Kenny.
For the study, data on age, circumstances and manner of death were accessed from over 200 sources. The researcher also went to rapper death websites, Dead Punk Stars and similar sites for all popular music genres.
The genres she covered included African, ballad, bluegrass, blues, Cajun, calypso, Christian pop, conjunto, country, doo-wop, electroclash, folk, funk, Gospel, hard rock, hip hop, honky tonk, indie, jazz, Latin, metal, new wave, polka, pop, psychedelic, punk, punk-electronic, rock rap, reggae, rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, ska, soul, swamp, swing, techno, western and world music.
The study examined four outcomes - longevity and the proportion of deaths by suicide, homicide and non-intentional injury or accident. Longevity was determined by calculating the average age of death for each musician by sex and decade of death.
These averages were then compared with population averages by sex and decade for the US population (per 100,000).
