The table below shows the genres over time (oldest to youngest genres), with the average age of death of popular musicians by genre and gender against life expectancy (LE) for American men and women born in the same year.

Life expectancy and genre

Musicians from the older genres - blues, jazz (including bebop and dixieland), country (including country and western, boogie woogie, honky tonk and bluegrass), and gospel (including spiritual and Christian rock), enjoyed on average the same lifespan as that of the American population with the same year of birth and sex. The next group, R&B (including doo wop and soul), pop, folk (including ballad and polka) and world music, had lower life expectancy compared to the American population. Thereafter, the gap between population life and average age of death widens for the more recent genres, rock (including rockabilly), electronic (including experimental, techno, disco and funk), punk, metal, rap and hip-hop. This pattern reflects to some extent a confusion in the data: musicians dying the youngest belong to newer genres (electronic, punk, metal, rap, hip-hop) that did not exist as long as genres such as jazz, country, gospel and blues. Consequently, they do not have the same chance of having a full lifespan.

Different mortality rates, different genres, different causes of death

The table below shows that musicians from different genres have different mortality rates of different causes of death.

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