Overview
- The study compared 324 famous singers with 324 less-famous peers matched by birth year, gender, nationality, ethnicity, genre, and solo/band status.
- Average age at death was about 75 for famous singers versus roughly 79–80 for their matched counterparts, a gap of around 4 to 4.5 years.
- Fame was linked to an approximately 33% higher relative mortality risk, a magnitude the authors note is comparable to estimates for smoking.
- Band membership correlated with lower mortality, with about a 26% reduced risk compared with solo artists regardless of fame.
- The peer-reviewed analysis, published Nov. 25 in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, covered artists active from 1950 to 1990 with deaths tracked through December 2023 and remains observational with demographically skewed samples.