No offence to you at all MaaF as you are a good feller , but personally I'm not going to subscribe to any 'oh no - damn you 2017' stuff ;)

People have always passed away. Every day of every year. There are now many decades worth of 'famous' people out there getting older.
Logic dictates that quite a few will pop off before next new year.

RIP bloke who wrote a song I heard a few times.