Janis Joplin the Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous "Pearl" (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an "a cappella" arrangement; the track on the
Janis Joplin were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the notional '27 Club'.) Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice", music columnist Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering