Duncan Sheik, 1969 – 2026
“Barely Breathing”, Spring Awakening, and a song about Brum that has been on our daytime playlist since the day we launched.
18/09/2026
Duncan Sheik has died at the age of 56. His death was reported on 18/09/2026 by NBC News, Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter.
Most people know him for two things. “Barely Breathing”, the single from his 1996 self-titled debut that turned into one of the most persistent radio songs of the decade. And Spring Awakening, the Broadway musical he wrote the score for, which won him a Tony.
He is also the man who wrote “Birmingham”.
It has been on our daytime playlist since the day Brum Radio launched, and it is still there.
The track came out on Legerdemain in October 2015. Sheik wrote it in the summer of 2010 while on tour with Suzanne Vega, re-reading an Irvine Welsh novel, and put himself in the head of a character he described like this.
“A petty criminal from Scotland who had headed down south to fleece the Birmingham natives of their cash in some kind of con game.”
Duncan Sheik
He reckoned that was “a pretty good analogy for being a musician on tour.”
So it is our Birmingham not Alabama’s, which is where most (non Brummie) people assume any song called Birmingham must be about.
It sounds different to the rest of that record too and includes the brilliant sentence “We’ll make a few grand, Birmingham”. Where most of Legerdemain is acoustic, “Birmingham” has folk and blues sitting on top of an electronic groove, and that is a large part of why it has held up on daytime for as long as it has.
Thank you, Duncan. RIP.
