Three Dog Night once sang that ‘One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do’. Bruce Springsteen sang that ‘Two hearts are better than one.’ But it’s common knowledge that celebrity deaths come in threes. And these past few weeks have provided quite the celebrity death trifecta, eh? First Poly Styrene, then Phoebe Snow and now Osama Bin Laden finishes the triple shot. Only historians will be able to tell which of them had the greatest cultural impact, but they are eerily similar to each other.

Lead singer in the band X-Ray Spex, Poly Styrene was hailed by no less a musical authority as Billboard as the "archetype for the modern-day feminist punk"; because she wore dental braces, stood against the typical sex object female of 1970s rock and was of mixed race. She was one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female".

Phoebe Snow gained fame and acclaim with her 1974 debut album ‘Phoebe Snow’ that earned her a Grammy nomination and led to tours with Paul Simon and Jackson Browne.

Osama Bin Laden; we’ll, I think we’re all familiar with his gig.

Styrene had "Oh Bondage Up Yours", Snow had "Poetry Man" and Bin Laden had 9/11 and all three of them pretty much coasted on their one big hit after that. Styrene and Snow chose motherhood and I suppose that this may have been Bin Laden's excuse as well, though he was much more private about his Abbottabad celebrity lifestyle. Then there's the way they died which are also eerily similar. Styrene and Snow both had cancer while Bin Laden had the metaphorical "cancer" of being shot up by United States Navy Seals. When will they find a cure? For Poly, for Phoebe, for Osama. Rest in peace everyone; well, almost everyone.

- Dave Glassman