Duncan Sheik, the singer-songwriter and composer best known for his earwormy ’90s hit, “Barely Breathing” and his composition of the Broadway musical, “Spring Awakening” — for which he won two Tonys — died on Thursday at the age of 56. And as details surrounding his passing from cardiac arrest are being shared alongside remembrances of his life’s work, what’s standing out in the sadness is all that Sheik stacked up in his short time on earth, beyond just that one song used to torture Marnie Michaels in an episode of “Girls,” handfuls of years after it was released.
In a 1998 concert review for The New York Times, writer Ann Powers opened with: “Don’t hate Duncan Sheik because he’s beautiful. He is trying very hard to distance himself from that fact.” And just as that review and that specific quote have taken on new life, widely shared in the wake of Sheik’s passing, so have the many cultural moments that pushed him past being just a pretty face with one well-known song.
Commenting on the use of his hit song in “Girls” during a 2013 interview with The Pop Break, Sheik seemed to very much be in on the joke.
“There’s an avant-garde visual artist who is trying to seduce one of these girls,” Sheik says in the interview, explaining the scene. “He puts her in this kind of weird visual torture chamber, with all these horrible videos being played. And he turns ‘Barely Breathing’ on super loud in the torture chamber. And that’s his art piece . . . I totally understood it, because that’s often how I’ve felt when I’ve had to play the song.”
Sheik’s music received another playful jab in a Season 3 episode of “The Sopranos,” in which the character Christopher Moltisanti threatens to shove his albums up someone’s butt.
If that’s not breaking the zeitgeist bubble, I don’t know what is.
When Salon spoke to Sheik in 2007, he spoke of what he wanted to see for himself in the future, following his success with “Spring Awakening.”
“I hope to keep making records, but I also have the understanding that I have the freedom and liberation to be able to make a record and not necessarily worry about its commercial prospects.”
And he did just that.
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