The 27 Club is an awful club to be a member of even though its members are all famous. It's a club that should never have come into existence, but sadly and tragically keeps growing. What exactly is it, what makes it so awful? Well, the 27 Club is a term that started off as a theory in the early 1970s to explain the cultural phenomenon of musicians who die at the age of 27. Back then when music fans made the connection that Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix all died at the age of 27, it was assumed that there must be some kind of eerie, other-worldly connection and the term gained popularity.
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Since then the term has been expanded to include celebrities and famous people outside of the music industry who have also died at the age of 27. When Kurt Cobain died in 1994, a lot of attention was given to the 27 Club and then when Amy Winehouse also died at the age of 27 in 2011, the 27 Club gained even more notoriety. The 27 Club theory, or the idea that musicians or celebrities die at a greater frequency at age 27 than any other age, has been debunked. Still, the term persists perhaps because the members of this posthumous club all seem to have died tragically and far, far too soon.