The 27 Club

As people have learned over the weekend, singer Amy Winehouse died at her home in North London Saturday at the age of twenty-seven.

The singer shot to popularity thanks to her album Back To Black in 2007. Since then her singing career got eclipsed by her personal problems, court appearances and tabloid antics.

I was sorry to hear she died. I knew who she was, but really didn’t know anything more than that she was a singer who always seemed to be making news for her behavior. I don’t keep up on celebrity tabloid news and wasn’t aware exactly what the personal issues she was dealing with were.

The one thing that I found interesting reading all the reports about her death is she has become the latest member of ‘The 27 Club’.

Several popular musicians have coincidentally died at the age of 27 and I guess now it’s become some kind of morbid pattern that people like to point out. People like to try to make sense out of the randomness of death and this ‘age 27’ thing seems like a way to find some kind of cosmic plan or logic to these famous people dying. At least for some people I guess.

Brian Jones, Jimi Hendricks, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison all died at age 27. Not surprisingly most musicians in the 27 Club were involved in drugs and/or alcohol, which attributed to their early deaths.

I had read on person who refused to add Kurt Cobain to this 27 Club. Although he died at age 27 his death was ruled a suicide and this negated his admission into the club in this guys eyes.

It’s a pretty strange way of thinking.