Musicians Who Tragically Died By Drowning

Dolores O'Riordan was the lead singer of The Cranberries, and her beautifully haunting voice could send shivers down your spine. Despite her fame and the band's success, she was dealing with a lot of pain in her life, from being abused as a child, to an eating disorder, to mental health issues. But she'd sought treatment for many of these painful issues and tried to stay on the wagon when it came to alcohol as well.

Sadly, it was one of the times she was drinking to excess that would cause her death. In January 2018, while in London to work on some music, O'Riordan was drinking alone in her hotel room into the early morning hours. At some point, she got into the bathtub with her clothes on and drowned. Per BBC News, one of the police officers called to the scene that morning reported at the inquest into the singer's death, "I saw Mrs. O'Riordan submerged in the bath with her nose and mouth fully under the water."

While it seemed like her death might be suicide, the inquest found it was simply a tragic accident. While O'Riordan had taken medication, it was only found to be at normal amounts in her bloodstream. The coroner, Dr. Shirley Radcliffe, said (via The Guardian): "There's no evidence that this was anything other than an accident. There was no intention, this seems to be solely a tragic accident."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Whitney Houston had one of the greatest voices of all time, and even though it was clear she'd been going through some things by 2012, it was a shock for fans to learn Houston had died — and on the day before the Grammys, no less. 

Houston was discovered in a hotel room on the afternoon of February 11 by her assistant, "lying face down in the bathtub filled with water, unresponsive" (via CNN). It would eventually come to light that there had only been a foot of water in the bathtub, and the assistant had only been out of the room for about 30 minutes. Because Houston was known to have used drugs in the past, many assumed she must have overdosed. However, the coroner determined her cause of death was drowning and "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use."

CNN spoke to Henry Spiller, director of the Kentucky Regional Poison Control Center, about the autopsy report. He explained that while Houston drowned, it was most likely a reaction to the cocaine in her system that put her in danger. "If you look at cocaine deaths, more deaths are from arrhythmias than seizures," Spiller said. "Based on what is the report, it seems more likely that she had a vasospasm (which shuts off blood flow to the heart) or a fatal arrhythmia." An arrhythmia could have caused Houston to lose consciousness, making it possible to drown in just a foot of water.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Johnny Burnette might not be as famous as Elvis Presley, but at least according to the former's nephew, there would have been no Elvis without his uncle. Billy Burnette told Vintage Rock magazine, "A lot of people dismiss the influence of [Johnny and Dorsey Burnette] on Elvis, but he got a lot of his ideas from those guys." Johnny's son Rocky told the magazine about how his childhood was affected by his father's fame: "We had such a yo-yo existence. We were up and then we were down. When 'Dreamin' and 'You're Sixteen' came out, boy, all of a sudden my dad was getting the TV work he needed. He was doing the international tours. He had his own record company. The first act that he signed to the label was Karen and Richard Carpenter."

While he might have gone on to even bigger success, Johnny died at the far too young age of 30. On August 14, 1964, he was out on a lake in California and returning to shore in his boat after dark when a motorboat collided with his. His body was recovered two days later. According to a 2007 article in the local Lake County News, the area was reluctant to acknowledge the tragedy or the famous person who had died in its midst, and Johnny Burnette was pretty much forgotten for decades. 

Jeff Buckley came from music royalty and was well on his way to his own successful career when tragedy struck. But his death might not have come as such a surprise to himself as it did to those around him. Musician Joan Wasser (a.k.a. Joan As Policewoman) told Mojo magazine of the eerie prediction he once made to her: "Not too long after we met, he said, 'You know, I'm going to die young.'" Meanwhile, Buckley's friend Tammy Shouse told the magazine, "he was dreaming about his death and he knew that something was up, and he felt it." While it's easy to see these events as meaningful after the fact, when they did happen, it seemed Buckley had predicted the future all too accurately.

In May 1997, he was in Memphis to record his second album when he decided to take an impromptu dip in the Mississippi River. Buckley was wearing clothes and floating along when a passing boat caused a wake that evidently pulled him under. A friend who was waiting on the shore said he only looked away for a second, and when he turned around again, Buckley had disappeared. Despite a major official search, his body was eventually discovered by civilians on a riverboat. Jeff Buckley was only 30 years old.

While Albert Ayler is recognized as a visionary jazz musician now, not many people realized that during his lifetime. His career saw successes others would kill for, but he also faced a lot of hardship and rejection since he was clearly talented but people just did not get what he was playing. Eventually, it appears to have become too much for him.

"The last time I saw him," musician Annette Peacock told The Guardian, "was at Slug's Saloon, on the Lower East Side. He'd just finished a set, and he was surrounded by a small group of sycophants. He turned away from the group, and said the last words he would ever speak to me. 'I'm not even here,' he said. I realized that his spirit was broken." Other friends recalled Ayler had been acting strange for a while and was dealing with financial problems. 

One day in November 1970, Ayler disappeared after a fight with his girlfriend. His body was found in the East River almost three weeks later, and the official cause of death was "asphyxia by submersion — death by drowning" (via The Guardian), and most people assumed it was a suicide, although there was no way to know for sure.

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While most famous for her turn on the TV show "Glee" (where she sang and was nominated for a Grammy for her involvement in a performance on the show) Naya Rivera also released her own music, including the 2019 EP "My Heart." She was also a mother, and on July 8, 2020, she was boating with her 4-year-old son on a lake in California.

In 2020, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Rivera's son revealed some of the tragic details of what happened that day (via the Los Angeles Times): While she and her son were swimming, "the boat started to be carried away — likely by the current and wind," attorney Amjad Khan wrote. The boy, "who was closer, managed to get back on the boat by his own volition and braced himself on the boat, which was rocking back and forth forcefully in the current and wind." The autopsy report (via NBC News) noted that after her son was safe, "the decedent put her arm up in the air and yelled 'help.' The decedent then disappeared into the water." 

Rivera's body was not recovered from the lake for five more days. She was 33 years old.