Happy Birthday

January 27 is the birthday of Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, among other musicians. I was looking at Wikipedia list of people born on January 27 and noticed that there were many musicians.

I shouldn't count these ancient greats that I cherry-picked from earlier centuries.

1756 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer (d. 1791)
1885 - Jerome Kern, American composer (d. 1945)
1885 - Eduard Künneke, German composer (d. 1953)
1885 - Harry Ruby, American musician (d. 1974)
1908 - Oran "Hot Lips" Page, American musician (d. 1954)
1918 - Skitch Henderson, English bandleader (d. 2005)
1918 - Elmore James, American blues musician (d. 1963)
1919 - Ross Bagdasarian, American musician (d. 1972)
1920 - Helmut Zacharias, German violinist (d. 2002)
1930 - Bobby Blue Bland, American singer
1937 - John Ogdon, English pianist (d. 1989)
1944 - Nick Mason, English musician (Pink Floyd)

Just look at the 1960s:

1961 - Margo Timmins, Canadian singer (Cowboy Junkies)
1961 - Gillian Gilbert, British musician (New Order)
1964 - Bridget Fonda, American actress
1967 - Bobby Deol, Indian actor
1968 - Mike Patton, American singer (Faith No More)
1968 - Tricky, English rapper
1969 - Cornelius, musician (Flipper's Guitar)
1969 - Michael Kulas, Canadian singer/songwriter (James (band))
1969 - Bobby Deol , Indian Actor

Of these people born on January 27 in the 1960s, 6 out of 9 people noted in the Wikipedia, nearly 70%, were musicians. The pattern is a little different if you look at a longer timespan.

1970 - Jon Douglas Rainey, Actor/Host of It Takes a Thief
1970 - Mark Trojanowski, American musician (Sister Hazel)
1971 - Fann Wong, Singapore entertainer (Shanghai Knights)
1972 - Keith Wood, Irish rugby player
1974 - Chaminda Vaas, Sri Lankan cricketer
1976 - Clint Ford, American voice actor
1976 - Ahn Jung-Hwan, Korean football player
1979 - Daniel Vettori, New Zealand cricketer
1979 - Rosamund Pike, British actress
1980 - Marat Safin, Russian tennis player
1981 - Alicia Molik, Australian tennis player
1981 - Josh Groban, American Singer
1983 - Carlo Colaiacovo, Canadian hockey player
1987 - Lily Donaldson, British model
1988 - Kerlon Moura Souza, Brazilian footballer

Sports comes up to about 50%, with only one musician mentioned.

I thought that maybe they just had a lot of musicians in the database. So I compared it with another date, July 21.

1960 - Lance Guest, American actor
1960 - Fritz Walter, German footballer
1961 - Amar Singh Chamkila, Punjabi folk singer
1961 - "Big" Jim Martin, American musician (Faith No More)
1963 - Kevin Poole, English footballer
1964 - Jens Weißflog, German ski jumper
1965 - Gudni Bergsson, Icelandic footballer
1968 - Brandi Chastain, American soccer player
1968 - Lyle Odelein, Canadian hockey player
1969 - Emerson Hart, American musician (Tonic)
1970 - Shawn Stasiak, American professional wrestler
1971 - Nuno Markl, Portuguese comedian and radio host
1978 - Josh Hartnett, American actor
1979 - David Carr, American football player
1979 - Tamika Catchings, American basketball player
1980 - C.C. Sabathia, American baseball player
1981 - Titus Bramble, English footballer
1981 - Stefan Schumacher, German cyclist
1981 - Veronica Belmont, CNET TV personality
1982 - Claudette Ortiz, American soul singer
1983 - Eivør Pálsdóttir, Faroese singer
1983 - Kellen Winslow II, American football player
1984 - Liam Ridgewell, English footballer
1985 - Von Wafer, American basketball player

This set had 15 athletes out of 24, almost 60% athletes, with football, soccer, and basketball heavily represented. Musicians were only 5, counting singers, about 20%.

It looks like there really are tendencies for certain dates to favor certain occupational outcomes (as astrologers worldwide have suggested for millenia).

Possible alternative explanations:? Randomness? Or it could depend on who uploaded the data. Maybe a sports freak was working on one day, while a music fan beat the sports person to the punch on another date, but I don't think so. As evidence for certain tendencies to occur on certain days, notice that three great composers were born on the same day in 1885.