"I see 8-year-olds playing Right Here Waiting on the piano and posting videos on TikTok. Are you kidding me? That song’s almost 40 years old. That’s a privilege": Richard Marx says he no longer cares about being labelled a balladeer rather than a rocker

Portrait of singer Richard Marx at the Poplar Creek Music Theater in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, May 28, 1988. (Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images).

He might have scored huge success in the ‘80s and ‘90s as a balladeering heartthrob, but Richard Marx says that, at the time, he was irked by the suggestion that he wasn’t a proper rocker.

“I’ve always considered myself a rock singer and rock writer,” he tells People. “I think I just bristled at the pigeonholing, at the dismissive, ‘You’re not really a rocker because you can sing. If you’re going to sing Endless Summer Nights and Right Here Waiting, you’re not really a rocker.’ Fuck you. Just because you can’t do both. I can do both.”