Rob Cantor Obituary

Robert Howard Cantor, musician, father, and husband, died March 31, 2026, in California at the age of 42.

Born and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Cantor always had a proclivity for music. At age eight, he entered a songwriting competition at school, winning first place. Unknown to Cantor, he went uncredited as a ghost writer when the song he submitted, "I Wanna Sex You Up" was then recorded and published by American R&B group Color Me Badd.

Throughout his high school years and into his college years, Cantor took to writing songs about love, such as "Song About Love," "Love Song," and the fan-favorite "Love You So Much I Wrote a Song About It." It was in college that Cantor formed the band Tally Hall, alongside Andrew Horowitz, Zubin Sedghi, Joe Hawley, and Ross Federman. They quickly rose to prominence when the music video for their song "Banana Man," went viral on the website Albino Blacksheep.

Cantor graduated in 2005, and to the disappointment of many, he turned down a full scholarship to medical school in order to pursue music full-time with Tally Hall. The band went on to release two albums, Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum (2008), and Good and Evil (2011). It was shortly after the release of this second album that the band would break up. Or go on a hiatus, idk if I'm being honest.

Following this split, Cantor would pursue a solo career. With the help of fellow musicians Gregory "Gregtronic" Jenkins and Bora "Steve" "Karacca," Cantor would publish his first solo album, Not a Trampoline, in 2014. It was this same year that he would make the viral YouTube videos "Shia LaBeouf Live," which garnered 7,000,000 views in ten days, and "29 Celebrity Impressions, 1 Original Song," where Rob flawlessly impersonated 29 celebrities singing his song "Perfect." Shortly thereafter, Cantor released a followup video revealing that, while his 29 impressions were all real, the song was not an original.

Since 2017, Rob has been writing and recording songs with Disney, sometimes in collaboration with Gregtronic as well as fellow Tally Hall bandmate Andrew Horowitz and musician Genevieve Goings. In 2025, he published a re-release of his 2014 album, announcing a second solo album as well. Unfortunately, that album will never see the light of day, as he is dead.

He is survived by his wife Maria, and his seven children, Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl.