Your Life Can Not Ever Be Ours

Scott Hardie | August 6, 2026
I'm sad lately at the passing of two musicians whose work I really enjoyed.

I got into Glen Hansard during the pandemic, long after the peak of his fame around the time that he starred in the movie Once, but wow, was I impressed. He was a gifted songwriter, understated yet still so emotive in tunes like "Stay the Road." Ireland's outpouring of grief for him in the last week is understandable.

The loss of Kavinsky hits me even harder. I discovered him with "Nightcall," which got a high profile due to its inclusion in the Ryan Gosling movie Drive. But honestly, he was much better at the album than the song: Check out the entire album OutRun for a fun hour of listening. Kavinsky took thematic inspiration from 1980s action & sci-fi movies, so if you grew up on the likes of Knight Rider and The Wraith like I did, it's quite a throwback. (Seriously, go listen to "Rampage" and tell me it doesn't sound like someone fused Mike Post, Pete Carpenter, and Sylvester Levay in a lab.) His later work was smoother, maturing and mellowing like his compatriots Daft Punk did. I've listened to his music many times over the last 15 years, and I'll treasure it more knowing that there won't be more to come.

I really hope that the whole "deaths always comes in threes" superstition doesn't prove accurate here, because I really don't want to lose another favorite musician right now.

Scott Hardie | September 28, 2026
I just had to write that last paragraph, didn't I?

I was surprised and sad to hear about the recent passing of Duncan Sheik. Like most people, I discovered him in the mid-nineties when his hit "Barely Breathing" seemed to worm its way into every corner of pop culture. I kept up with him for years, listening extensively to his first five albums. He could write radio-friendly pop hits aplenty, but he also had an ear for melancholy and emotional depth, and he wrote good music for movies that didn't deserve him. But around the start of the 2010s, he transitioned into composing film scores and Broadway musicals, and I stopped keeping up with his work. I also know that he struggled with alcoholism over the course of his life, and I can only guess what it felt like to watch in the mirror over the years as that disease robbed him of his golden voice and magazine-cover looks. Even for an artist whose undercurrent of bleakness was never far from the surface, it still feels far too soon to be mourning him.