Some of the greatest voices were silenced at the age of 27, like Robert Johnson, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and more recently, Kurt Cobain.

So many artists died at that age that popular culture grouped them all together in what’s referred to as the 27 Club.

That infamous club also includes Amy Winehouse. The soulful British chanteuse struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, and died of alcohol poisoning in July of 2011, aged, it goes without saying, 27.

Back to Black, a new biopic from Focus Features starring Marisa Abela, tells the story of the singer who burned brightly but for too short a time. The film tells “the extraordinary story of Amy Winehouse’s early rise to fame from her early days in Camden through the making of her groundbreaking album, Back to Black, [which] catapulted Winehouse to global fame. Told through Amy’s eyes and inspired by her deeply personal lyrics, the film explores and embraces the many layers of the iconic artist and the tumultuous love story at the center of one of the most legendary albums of all time.”

The film also stars Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Cowan and Lesley Manville. Sam Taylor-Johnson, who helmed Nowhere Boy, a film about John Lennon’s teenage years, directed the film from a screenplay by Matt Greenhaigh. It will be released on May 17th theatrically in the United States. Winehouse’s story was told earlier in a documentary titled Amy, released in 2015.

Many other members of the 27 Club have been featured in films, whether in biopics or in documentaries. Probably the most famous of all films about singers who passed away at that early age is The Doors from 1991. Val Kilmer earned high praise for his portrayal of singer Jim Morrison, who died in 1971, in the film, which was directed by Oliver Stone. In the scenes where The Doors performed, Kilmer did the singing; the actor spent six months prior to filming rehearsing Doors songs, learning 50 songs, 15 of which he performed in the film.

Jimi Hendrix, the blues/rock guitar legend who died in 1970, was the subject of both a documentary and a biopic. Outkast’s Andre Benjamin played Hendrix in Jimi: All is By My Side, released in 2013. Benjamin and director John Ridley were nominated for multiple awareds for the film, including two Image Awards, an Independent Spirit Award, and nominations from the SXSW and Stockholm Film Festivals. A documentary called simply Jimi Hendrix was released in 1973 and featured interviews with the subject interspersed with concert footage of Hendrix performing at the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, and elsewhere.

The original member of the 27 Club might be blues legend Robert Johnson, a singer-songwriter-guitarist whose music inspired a whole generation of rock and roll artists, like Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan. Johnson, who died in 1938 of unknown causes, was also the stuff of supernatural legends: it was said that when Johnson was a young, untalented wannabe blues musician, he was instructed to go to a nearby crossroad where he met the Devil, who took his guitar, tuned it, played a few songs, and returned it to him, giving him mastery of the instrument in exchange for his soul. This legend grew over time, and Johnson seemingly embraced it, writing a song called “Cross Roads Blues” about the alleged incident.

The story was also featured in a Japanese Manga series and an episode of the television show Supernatural, but thus far there hasn’t been a biopic on Johnson’s life, though back in 2019 a movie with the working title Love in Vain, to be directed by Peter Ramsey, went into pre-production, where it has languished ever since. Three documentaries about Johnson have been produced –  the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson, the 1997 documentary Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl: The Life and Music of Robert Johnson, and notably, 2018 Netflix movie Remastered: Devil at the Crossroads, which does explore the idea of the encounter with the Devil via animation and interviews with Eric Clapton, Keb’ Mo’, Taj Mahal and others.

Janis Joplin joined The 27 Club in 1970, dying of a heroin overdose. Joplin was the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company for two albums before pursuing a solo career. Her gravelly, soulful voice propelled songs like “Piece of My Heart”, “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Cry Baby” b/w “Mercedes Benz” onto the charts and making them an indelible part of our nation’s musical landscape. Joplin died just one month after the lead singer of the band Canned Heat, Alan Wilson, and 16 days after Jimi Hendrix, and as all three artists were 27 at the time of their deaths, thus giving credence to the idea of a “27 Club,” an idea thought up much later. Jim Morrison’s death a year later would only strengthen the idea.

In 2017, it was reported that a biopic about Joplin titled Get it While You Can, which would have starred Amy Adams, would not be produced. Adams was one of several actresses considered for the role, including Renee Zellweger and Reese Witherspoon. Zooey Deschanel, Michelle Williams and even P!nk were all briefly attached to films about Joplin that never materialized. The closest thing to a Janis biopic ever produced is Bette Midler’s The Rose, which was only loosely based on Joplin’s life and career. Joplin has been the focus of a few documentaries, though, like 1974’s Janis and 2015’s Janis: Little Girl Blue.

Many more movies have been made about Nirvana frontman, songwriter and founder Kurt Cobain. Cobain shot into the limelight shortly after Nirvana’s album Nevermind, led by the popularity of the single “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Cobain struggled with the pressures of being in the public eye, though, and he struggled with addiction. In 1994, he checked himself out of rehabilitation facility and a week later was found dead of what was determined to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Cobain’s musical legacy still reverberates today, despite his tragically short life, and many documentaries have chronicled his rapid rise to fame and how it affected him. The 1998 documentary Kurt and Courtney investigated detective Tom Grant’s claim that Cobain’s contentious relationship with wife Courtney Love may have meant she was responsible for his death, but ultimately concluded that Cobain killed himself. Other documentaries about Cobain include Teen Spirit: The Tribute to Kurt Cobain from 1994, All Apologies: Kurt Cobain 10 Years On by Jon Brewer, and Brett Morgen’s film Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck from 2015.

Cobain’s life has not received the biopic treatment yet, but Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film Last Days is based, albeit loosely, on the events surrounding his final days, with Michael Pitt’s character Blake standing in for Kurt. A docudrama about Kurt and Courtney Love’s involvement in his death called Soaked in Bleach and released in 2015 starred Daniel Roebuck as Tom Grant, again exploring whether Cobain actually killed himself. The film starred Tyler Bryan as Cobain and Sarah Scott as Courtney Love, who had her lawyers send theater owners cease-and-desist letters trying to prevent the film from being viewed.

There are many more members of The 27 Club, some of whom have been featured in documentaries; in music alone the list includes Rudy Lewis of the Drifters (1964), Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones (1969), Soul singer Lindad Jones (1972), Ron McKernan of The Grateful Dead (1973), Badfinger’s Pete Ham (1975), The Stooges’ Dave Alexander (1975), Big Star’s Chris Bell (1978), Reggae artist Jacob Miller (1980), D. Boon of The Minutemen (1985), Echo and the Bunnymen drummer Pete de Freitas (1989), The Gits singer Mia Zapata who was murdered in 1993, Kristen Pfaff of Hole (1994), and Richey Edwards of The Manic Street Preachers (1995). The curse, if there is one, extends to other pop culture figures like artist Jean-Michel Baquiat and actors Jonathan Brandis, Thuy Trang and Anton Yelchin as well as Elvis Presley’s grandson Benjamin Keough.

Is it a curse to be famous and 27? Is there any reason all of these talented people (and many more) only made it to this tragically young age? Perhaps there is no reason, as there are countless other musicians, actors and artists who died tragically at other ages. But the mystique, lore or whatever behind The 27 Club remains as vivid as our memories of those we have lost.