Whereas my intuition is that there are traits that help you become famous (competitiveness, savant syndrome, prioritization of success over happiness, etc.) that also raise your mortality risk.
The control point is comparing to less famous musicians. I’d assume many of which have similar personality traits and desire for fame. But when it doesn’t materialize, their personality traits arent causing them to die early.
The lifestyle of constantly partying, drugs, sex, little consequences, money, excess, etc. Versus the less famous musician who has to function like an adult, stresses over their mortgage, etc. Is sure to have a variance with respect to mortality.
Goes into a lot of the realities of the surreal lifestyle
If you have personal problems, it will follow you no matter where you go or how much money you have. It’s attached to you.
I don't know how much truth there is to it, some musicians are famous for that, but touring is far from easy, musicians move a lot and have to give their best every time when they are on stage. Especially singers, as their body is their instrument, they can't really afford to be out of shape. I am sure that after big public events like concerts, the thing musicians really want is to get done with it and go to sleep, not party all night. There may be drugs involved, but I'd expect it to be more about enhancing performance than recreation.
And that would apply to all professional musicians, famous or not. For most, I'd say what is excessive is their job, not the life of partying famous people are said to have.
Maybe, although an alternative explanation would be that those musicians with the strongest traits are the ones that succeed, and that same strength of those traits also leads to early mortality.
[1] https://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full....
I don’t know if I buy it myself as being a big contributing factor. The lifestyles of famous people are well known to be indulgent. So that seems like a more direct explanation. But anything is possible
Three main differences that come to mind... - athletes repeat this annually (famous touring musicians might take a year or two off to record new material). - athletes likely live a healthier overall lifestyle because being extremely fit is part of the job. Plus the teams have embedded MDs and other health support staff (some musicians will, some won't). - athletes usually retire from their primary sport in their 30s, so only ~20 years of touring on the high end, where musicians can tour into their 50s or 60s (or beyond for a few).
1) It's in the title: "The Price of Fame" implies that there are downsides to becoming famous, rather than there are downsides to having traits that might make you famous.
2) While the abstract merely claims "associated with" (which is correlation not causation), the phrase "beyond occupational factors" implies that the authors felt they removed important non-causal factors, hinting at likely causal relationship.
And yes, any causality implications are completely unfounded, and so this paper is of low quality.