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Robin Thicke
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 Duncan Sheik lacks the wan look of an alternative rocker. He has a happy, welcoming face and comports himself with no signs of angst. During the many years he has worked as a singer-songwriter he has remained consistently immune from the grip of creative block. On the subject of the self-doubt that can afflict so many young artists, Mr. Sheik said, “There were a couple of moments but literally two or three moments.”It is in some sense fitting then that Mr. Sheik should suddenly find himself, for the first time, at the glorious center of the Broadway musical’s generally buoyant world. He composed the score for “Spring Awakening” — his friend Steven Sater wrote the book and lyrics — the energetic new musical that has been praised so effusively by critics. (Writing about the show in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood proclaimed that Broadway “may never be the same.”) Based on the 1891 play by the German writer Frank Wedekind, “Spring Awakening,” explores the exhilaration and terrors of adolescent sex and the traumas associated with its repression. The music is alive and intensely emotional, steeped in themes of anger and ecstasy, longing and expectation. However much it is awash in psychology and social comment, “Spring Awakening” is still a Broadway production, and Broadway is a place to which Mr. Sheik never held out a compass. “I wanted to branch out and try different mediums,” he explained in his TriBeCa loft one afternoon last week. “But a musical was not one of them.” Like many of his generation and demographic — Mr. Sheik, 37, was educated at Andover and Brown — he found little to interest him in musical theater. “It is inherently problematic as a genre,” he said. When he described some of the actors in “Spring Awakening” as “more Broadway than others,” his face clenched. Such a comment was not intended as a compliment. “There is a pandering aspect to a lot of musicals, the sense that they ought to be fun with a capital F,” Mr. Sheik said. “And of course it has become this way. It wasn’t always thus.” How Mr. Sheik came then to compose a hit Broadway musical requires a digression into the matter of his spiritual life. Since an inspirational visit to a cousin in Los Angeles during his sophomore year of college, Mr. Sheik has practiced a strain of Buddhism called Nichiren, which stresses the simultaneous nature of cause and consequence.“This particular form of Buddhism attracted me because it is so proactive,” Mr. Sheik explained. “It is very much not about detachment. It’s about getting out into the world. It is a source of creative energy.” It was through a Nichiren cultural center in New York seven years ago that Mr. Sheik met Mr. Sater, who approached him about collaborating on a version of the Wedekind play set to music.“I thought, ‘Well, this is interesting to me in a way, but the music would have to make sense to people of my generation,’ ” Mr. Sheik said. The two men were of one mind. The actors would not converse in song, only express their interior yearnings through it. Mr. Sheik said he and Mr. Sater were influenced by Laurie Anderson’s musical “Moby Dick,” which appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “It never made you uncomfortable,” he said.“Spring Awakening” took seven years to reach Broadway. “I say yes to lots of things,” Mr. Sheik said. “There were many times during the process — we did extensive workshops — when I shook my head and thought: ‘What am I doing here? This is terrible.’ But in the end, for all the torture, it is the thing of which I’m most proud.”Though Mr. Sheik has had a seemingly blessed career, he has not always been happy with its trajectory. Having grown up in New Jersey and Hilton Head, S.C., around his musical grandparents, Mr. Sheik was besotted with instruments all his life and landed a contract with Atlantic Records at the age of 25 while living in Los Angeles. “I felt as though I were making records for the right reasons, but they weren’t finding the audience I hoped they would,” he said.With “Barely Breathing,” he had a hit single at the beginning of his career in 1996. “I think I was tainted by the Top 40 brush right out of the box,” he said. “There is a too-cool-for-school musical audience for whom that is just an unforgivable sin.”Mr. Sheik recorded five albums before “Spring Awakening,” and though he was well reviewed, his reputation as a serious artist was questioned. It wasn’t his intellectual credentials that were in doubt. He graduated with a degree in semiotics. In addition to the extensive guitar collection in his loft, he also has a sizable library. “Duncan’s a voracious reader,” his friend Duane Lavold, a musician, said. “He reads everything from philosophy to astrophysics to popular fiction.” But Mr. Sheik orbited the tony world of Von Furstenbergs and blonde socialites. “When I was at Brown, my friends were fancy,” he said. “Three of my roommates had gone to Eton. I was always surrounded by people who had more money than I did. I went to all the right parties, but I think I’ve been very much out-partied by the recent crop of celebutantes.” (His guest appearance on the television teen drama “Beverly Hills, 90210” in 1998 also may not have helped.)His next project is a film. He has just finished composing the score for “The Cake Eaters,” Mary Stuart Masterson’s directorial debut, which will probably make the film festival circuit next fall. When those rare moments of agitation do strike, Mr. Sheik can retreat to a small Buddhist altar in his loft that he chants in front of twice a day. “If I’m at sea,” he said, “I know I can chant for an hour or so, and things will get better.”
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Did You Know
'''Robin Alan Thicke''' (born March 10, 1977) is an American Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and occasional actor.
Biography
Robin Alan Thicke was born to vocalist and actress Gloria Loring and entertainer Alan Thicke. At a young age, Thicke showed an interest in music and has often cited classic soul singers like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder as his influences. Thicke has also mentioned being heavily influenced by George Michael. As a child, Thicke was a guest actor on several episodes of ''The Wonder Years'' and his father's show, ''Growing Pains'' (Such as the episode "Mom of the Year". He is the kid in the classroom talking about Ben). He decided to pursue a music career at the age of sixteen, Thicke became a friend to the president of Uptown Records, Andre Harrell, and struck a deal with the fledgling Nu America Records, a subsidiary of Interscope Records.
Thicke also penned a wide range of hits for pop artists such as Jordan Knight, writing and co-producing an extensive share of his self-titled album, Usher, Christina Aguilera, Mya, Brandy, Michael Jackson and Marc Anthony.
In 2005 Thicke won his first Grammy award for his collaborations on Usher's 2004 release ''Confessions''. As an artist, he recorded and performed solely under his surname, Thicke. He would continue to do so until 2005. On June 11, 2005, Thicke married actress Paula Patton, whom he met and began dating when he was 14 years old.[Interview with Paula Patton, The Craig Ferguson Show, 5 August 2008.]
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