Duncan Sheik — "Barely Breathing"
Duncan Sheik's brooding acoustic single became one of the defining adult-alternative hits of 1997 — and one of the longest-charting songs in Billboard history, quietly clinging to the Hot 100 for more than a year.
"Barely Breathing" was the 1996 debut single from singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik, off his self-titled debut album, produced by Rupert Hine. Its resigned lyric — a man talking himself out of a going-nowhere relationship over a gentle, circular acoustic-guitar figure — made it a fixture of late-90s adult-alternative and Top 40 radio. It peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 10, 1997.
The modest chart peak badly undersold its staying power. "Barely Breathing" spent 55 weeks on the Hot 100 — at the time the fourth-longest run in the chart's history — the kind of slow-burn ubiquity that made it feel far bigger than a #16 hit. It earned Sheik a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 1998 ceremony.
Sheik never had another pop hit that size, but his second act was arguably bigger: he composed the music for the Broadway rock musical Spring Awakening, winning the 2007 Tony Award for Best Original Score with lyricist Steven Sater. "Barely Breathing" endures as a perfect time capsule of the sensitive-guy-with-a-guitar sound that ruled the back half of the 90s.
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