Greg Kihn Passes Away

Greg Kihn, the singer-songwriter behind the radio hits “Jeopardy” and “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em),” died on Tuesday at the age of 75. Kihn’s family shared the sad news of his passing in a statement, where they revealed that his cause of death was complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Kihn was one of the first artists signed to Matthew King Kaufman’s Beserkley Records, where he was labelmates with Jonathan Richman.

“We weren’t like the other SF bands,” Kihn said in a 2018 interview. “Our music was derived from the British bands like the Who and the Faces. We were always writing new songs, and the fans came back week after week to see what we’d come up with. It was all about the songs, not the jamming.” With the Greg Kihn Band, the singer’s 1981 hit, “The Breakup Song,” reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, before reaching No. 2 on the national chart with “Jeopardy” in 1983. That song became even more popular following “Weird Al” Yankovic’s 1984 parody hit, “I Lost on Jeopardy.”