Duncan Sheik, ‘Spring Awakening’ Composer and ‘Barely Breathing’ Singer, Dead at 56

Duncan Sheik, singer of the 1996 hit single “Barely Breathing” and Tony Award-winning composer of Spring Awakening, died on Thursday. He was 56.

Sheik’s mother, Suzanne, confirmed the singer’s death to the New York Times, adding that the cause was organ failure. Earlier this week, the singer-composer was in “critical but stable” condition in a hospital and “receiving medical care” following an unspecified health issue.

The New Jersey native, a one-time bandmate of Lisa Loeb when the two attended Brown University together, released his self-titled debut album in 1996. The LP featured the single “Barely Breathing,” which was certified gold and reached Number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining on the charts for 55 consecutive weeks. Sheik received a Grammy nod for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the hit song.

While “Barely Breathing” was his only single to reach the Hot 100 chart, Sheik continued to put out music, releasing nine studio albums. One of those LPs — 2001’s Phantom Moon, a tribute of sorts to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon — paired Sheik with Steven Sater, a poet and songwriter that he met while practicing Nichiren Buddhism.  

The pair first collaborated on Sater’s 1999 play Umbrage, with Sheik providing the music to Sater’s lyrics. After Phantom Moon, the two reunited again for what would become their defining work, 2006’s Spring Awakening, a rock musical based on an 1891 German coming-of-age play.

Spring Awakening enjoyed a successful off-Broadway and then Broadway run, winning Best Musical at the Tony Awards in 2007; Sheik himself was awarded Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations at the Tonys, with a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album following soon after.

“I think he is a genius,” Sheik told Rolling Stone of working with Sater. “He is ‘out there,’ eccentric and unique and that’s why I love him. I try to make sure my music has those qualities in it.”

Over the next two decades, Sheik continued to work in the theater both with Sater — the duo also collaborated on 2019’s Alice in Wonderland musical Alice by Heart — and others, including providing the music for a theater interpretation of American Psycho.

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“There’s a version of American Psycho that you could do that is campy, kitschy, and incredibly broad and comic. I wasn’t interested in that,” Sheik told Rolling Stone in 2016, the year the musical hit Broadway. “I wanted it to be a little deeper and more ambiguous weird and strange and, hopefully, beautiful.”

Sheik also composed the music of plays based on The Taming of the Shrew, The Secret Life of Bees, and Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, an off-Broadway production that was due to debut in the fall.