Duncan Sheik Dead At 56

Duncan Sheik, the singer-songwriter best known for the 1996 pop-rock hit “Barely Breathing,” and for writing music for several Broadway shows, including the Tony-winning smash Spring Awakening, died today of organ failure, The New York Times reports. He was 56. Sheik was hospitalized earlier this week and was said to be in “critical but staple condition” following and undisclosed health issue.

“It is with profound sadness that we confirm the passing of Duncan Sheik,” a spokesperson for Sheik told People. “The world has a lost a singular talent, and deeply influential voice in music and theater. From his Grammy-nominated hit ‘Barely Breathing’ to his groundbreaking, Tony and Grammy Award-winning work on Spring Awakening, Duncan’s artistry touched many and leaves an indelible mark on the cultural landscape.”

Sheik was born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1969, and he grew up between the Garden State and South Carolina. He learned piano and guitar and played in several high school bands before landing at Brown University, where he was in a group with Lisa Loeb. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and eventually scored a solo deal with Atlantic Records. His self-titled debut came out in 1996.

Duncan Sheik stalled at No. 83 on the Billboard 200, but it yielded a timeless hit in “Barely Breathing,” which reached No. 16 on the Hot 100 and has amassed more than 86 million Spotify streams to date. The song earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Sheik would never again make the Hot 100, but he went on to release eight more studio albums, the most recent being 2022’s Claptrap.

After his brief flirtation with ’90s pop stardom, Sheik became better known for his work on Broadway. Collaborating with lyricist Steven Sater, he wrote the music for Spring Awakening, a rock musical based on an 1891 German play. The show opened in 2006 and went on to win the Tony for Best Musical. Sheik himself won Tonys for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations. Sheik went on to compose music for shows like Alice By Heart, American Psycho, and The Secret Life of Bees.

In a 2020 interview with American Songwriter, Sheik explained how his songwriting process differs depending on whether he’s writing for himself or for theater.

“When I’m writing my own material, I’m always writing music first and lyrics are grafted onto that,” Sheik said. “If the song serves as a mood, then the theme kind of emerges from that. Hopefully the music is evocative and mysterious enough that it brings something out in me that I wouldn’t have just sat down and written with a blank page.”

With theater material, he said, “all bets are off in terms of it being remotely autobiographical.”

“There’s these other characters and this other persona,” he said. “Of course you’re always drawing from your own experience to some extent, but it’s a very, very different thing where you’re telling a story or using the voice of another person, whether that’s a character or another writer. So that’s a whole other kind of process.”

Sheik leaves behind a wife, Nora Ariffin, and a seven-year-old daughter, Ines.