Duncan Sheik, the introspective singer/songwriter whose hit “Barely Respiratory” grew to become a defining mid-’90s pop music earlier than he reinvented himself as a Tony-winning Broadway composer, died yesterday (Sept. 17) in Manhattan on the age of 56. His mom, Suzanne Sheik, confirmed his loss of life to the New York Occasions, saying the trigger was organ failure.
Sheik’s profession was marked by a persistent stress between mainstream recognition and his personal resistance to the equipment of pop stardom. Delicate-spoken and cerebral, with a level in semiotics from Brown College, he arrived in Los Angeles in 1992 carrying a demo tape and appreciable discomfort with performing in public. “I may barely sing in public to save lots of my life at that time,” he recalled in a 2011 interview.
Inside just a few years, nevertheless, Sheik had grow to be an unlikely pop star. His self-titled 1996 debut, launched by Atlantic Data, produced “Barely Respiratory,” a melancholy portrait of a relationship coming aside wrapped in an irresistibly candy hook. The music earned a Grammy nomination, reached No. 16 on the Billboard Sizzling 100 and spent 55 weeks on the chart.
The music’s success turned Sheik into one thing he by no means appeared notably interested by being: a celeb heartthrob. Along with his movie-star appears and female-heavy viewers, the press forged him as a delicate, soulful intercourse image. “Don’t hate Duncan Sheik as a result of he’s lovely,” critic Ann Powers wrote after a 1998 live performance, “He’s making an attempt very laborious to distance himself from that reality.”
That distance was audible within the music. Sheik’s influences ranged from Joni Mitchell and the Cocteau Twins to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, whereas his lyrics drew on Buddhist philosophy and existential questions. His 1998 follow-up, Buzzing, was praised by the New York Occasions critic Stephen Holden for suggesting that “pop can nonetheless aspire to a lofty, looking classicism.” His third album, 2001’s Phantom Moon, made with poet and playwright Steven Sater, pushed additional into that territory.
Sheik had little curiosity in taking part in the traditional pop star sport. He later recalled that by the early 2000s, the “authenticity” of the choice rock period had given method to the extra overtly manufactured pop of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, ’N Sync and Backstreet Boys. “I believed, I’m not going to win on this sport of making an attempt to be Justin Timberlake,” he stated in a 2022 interview. “Perhaps I ought to attempt to do one thing totally different.”
That one thing totally different finally remodeled his profession. Sheik met Sater by means of their shared involvement with Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist group, and in 1999 Sater approached him about collaborating on a musical primarily based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play Spring Awakening. The mission would take years to succeed in the stage, however when it opened on Broadway in December 2006, Sheik’s music helped radically recast what a up to date musical may sound like.
Reasonably than writing conventional Broadway present tunes, Sheik and Sater created a rock rating that drew on the emotional directness of other music. Sheik coached the younger forged — together with future stars Lea Michele, Jonathan Groff and John Gallagher Jr. — to keep away from standard Broadway vocal bombast. “Think about that you simply’re Thom Yorke,” he instructed them. “Think about that you simply’re a younger David Bowie. Think about that you’re Fiona Apple. And please neglect about all of the vocal coaching you’ve ever had.”
The gamble paid off spectacularly. Spring Awakening gained eight Tony Awards, together with Greatest Musical, with Sheik taking house two: Greatest Unique Rating, shared with Sater, and Greatest Orchestrations. The manufacturing ran for greater than two years on Broadway and was revived in 2015. A brand new manufacturing is scheduled to open off Broadway in November.
Sheik subsequently composed music for a number of different stage productions, together with American Psycho, primarily based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, and Alice by Coronary heart, a Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland adaptation set in London throughout World Conflict II. American Psycho opened on Broadway in 2016 however closed after a comparatively brief run.
By all of it, Sheik continued to make data exterior the theater. His albums included 2011’s assortment of covers of British ’80s acts together with Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears, whereas his ultimate studio album, Claptrap, arrived in 2022 with an ambient digital soundscape.
Sheik was born Nov. 18, 1969, in Glen Ridge, N.J. His grandmother, who had studied at Juilliard, taught him piano starting when he was 6. After his mother and father divorced, his mom moved to Hilton Head Island, S.C., the place Sheik picked up his first electrical guitar and performed in a band masking Def Leppard and Van Halen. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Ma., graduating in 1988 earlier than enrolling at Brown. There, he hung out within the campus recording studio creating his personal materials and performed guitar with fellow scholar Lisa Loeb, who would rating her personal No. 1 hit with “Keep (I Missed You)” in 1994.
Sheik’s breakthrough got here after a number of years in Los Angeles, however fame by no means sat comfortably with him. He later recalled being thrust onto Late Present With David Letterman and The Tonight Present With Jay Leno after releasing just one album and taking part in maybe 30 or 40 reveals. “I used to be put in conditions that I didn’t have the expertise to deal with,” he stated in 2003, including, “I’m certain I sucked.”
