LOS ANGELES, Sept 19 — Duncan Sheik, the singer-songwriter who turned one of the defining soft-rock hits of the 1990s into an unlikely second act as the Tony-winning composer of Spring Awakening, has died. He was 56.
Sheik died Thursday from organ failure, his mother Suzanne Sheik told The New York Times, according to the Associated Press.
For casual listeners, Sheik remained synonymous with Barely Breathing, the quietly insistent single from his 1996 self-titled debut that spent 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 16 and earning him a Grammy nomination.
But his most enduring impact may have come a decade later, when a musician who considered himself a Broadway outsider helped blow open the sound of the American musical.
With lyricist and playwright Steven Sater, Sheik created the score for Spring Awakening, the rock-inflected adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s provocative 19th-century play about adolescent sexuality, repression and tragedy.
“We wanted to shake things up a bit. And we just set out to make this really cool piece of theatre,” Sheik told the Associated Press in 2007.
The gamble worked. Spring Awakening opened on Broadway in 2006 and ran for more than 860 performances, winning eight Tony Awards, including best musical, as well as the Grammy for best musical show album. Its original cast became a launching pad for performers including Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele, John Gallagher Jr., Lilli Cooper and Gideon Glick.
Sheik had been determined from the outset that the score should not sound like conventional musical theatre.
“I’m happy to do this musical, but I only want to do it if the music in the play is the kind that I and my peers can get behind stylistically and relate to and enjoy,” he recalled telling Sater in a 2006 AP interview.
That instinct became something of a mission. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 2015, Sheik said: “I love Stephen Sondheim. But it’s my mission to make sure that the theatre is paying attention to what the rest of the world is listening to.”
He continued testing that divide between pop and theatre with American Psycho, his musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel. The production reached Broadway in 2016 but closed after fewer than 90 performances.
Sheik nevertheless remained fascinated by the mechanics of writing songs that could operate both as music and drama.
“When you’re writing a song for the theatre, it has to accomplish all this other stuff,” he told AP in 2013. “It has to work in tandem with all these other agendas and creative impulses.”
Raised between South Carolina and New Jersey, Sheik began playing guitar as a child and counted Talk Talk, David Sylvian and Nick Drake among his influences.
His later work included Whisper House, Legerdemain and his 2022 album Claptrap. Spring Awakening, meanwhile, returned to Broadway in an acclaimed Deaf West Theatre revival in 2015 and remains one of the defining musicals of its generation.
For an artist who once approached Broadway as an outsider, Sheik ultimately helped change what Broadway could sound like.
