Totally Tunes: Gone Too Soon

 Death is inevitable. I mean, look around you right now. There's a pandemic raging that doesn't discriminate victim-wise, everyone could get it, and no matter the age the affected could die from the complications it brings. There's fatal car crashes everywhere. Various unstoppable diseases, mental health problems, old age. Death is here to stay, and was there when it took the lives of many musical artists throughout history, especially when it took those who were way too young to have died.

via Giphy

This bummer of a post is actually inspired by me having recently found out about the passing of Hungarian rock band AWS' frontman's passing. He was only 29. Leukemia. Fuck cancer.

As you can see from the heading gif, Amy Winehouse is yet another talent gone too soon. I'm not sure if overdoses (alcohol or drugs) are more or less tragic than terminal diseases, because with overdoses there could have been a glimmer of hope, of saving the person, to get them out of that, but it didn't happen.

It was pretty surprising back then when a celebrity on the rise happened to die so early into their career, as was Shannon Hoon's case. His overdose essentially cemented the one-hit wonderness of Blind Melon, and was an example of a lost talent for the then-budding MTV-loving youths.

Sometimes tragedy just strikes a whole family, as what happened to the Buckleys. First, father Tim dies from an overdose at only 28, and his son Jeff at 30 drowns while taking a spontaneous swim. Both deaths could have been preventable (Jeff's family states that it wasn't suicide, by the way) and yet they marked the early departure of two very unique, related, musical talents.

For the closer, let's go back in time for one of rock's most influential and incredibly tragic deaths by accident. It took only one plane crash to end the lives of Buddy Holly (22 years old), Ritchie Valens (17 years old), and J. P. Richardson (aka The Big Bopper, aged 28), three budding talents who one wonders what could they have achieved had they not decided to rent a charter plane that fateful day.

What musical artist who died young you'd wish that hadn't? What young artist death you think had a big impact on music in general to this day?