Bad Company's 1975 song "Shooting Star", from their album "Straight Shooter", is a cautionary tale about the perils of rock stardom, telling the story of a fictional musician named Johnny who rises to fame before dying young. Written by frontman Paul Rodgers, the track has endured as one of the era's starkest commentaries on the music industry, using a fictional character to reflect on the real toll that fame, excess and substance abuse took on musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The song's narrative arc, from Johnny's early struggles to his meteoric success and untimely death, is widely seen as drawing on the fates of real rock stars who died young at the height of their fame, with the lyrics directly referencing Jimi Hendrix as a grounding point for its warning. In doing so, "Shooting Star" positioned itself less as a celebration of rock excess and more as a sobering reflection on its human cost, a theme that has kept the song relevant in discussions of the "27 Club" and the darker side of 1970s rock culture.