The management of Rock Star Greg Kihn, well known for his popular 1980s hits “Jeopardy” and “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)” and the radio show that he featured for long in the Bay Area, died at the age of 75.
The management announced on his original website that the rock artist died on Tuesday after combating Alzheimer’s disease.
Greg Kihn was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 10, 1949. He then moved to the Bay Area in the 1970s, where he sang and released his first album in 1976.
His songs with Beserkely Records, alongside those of other power-pop stars like Earth Quake, the Rubinoos, and former Modern Lovers songwriter Jonathan Richman, assisted in elevating the label’s status. Kihn’s series of pun-themed albums, beginning with Next of Kihn and followed by Rockihnroll, Kihntinued, and Kihnspiracy, took the label’s greatest commercial victory.
Kihn achieved his first major hit in 1981 when “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)” climbed to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The rock star’s biggest release came after two years with “Jeopardy,” which came second on the Hot 100 and came first on the Billboard dance chart. The song’s music video earned heavy rotation on MTV, and opens with a bride stepping out of a limo in front of the iconic Mission Dolores in San Francisco’s Mission District.
It also became very popular that “Weird” Al Yankovic created a parody titled “I Lost on Jeopardy,” which featured Kihn in the closing scene, paying homage to the original video.
