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.”
Released in 1989, Right Here Waiting was originally written for Barbra Streisand, but she turned it down. "I had to messenger the cassette tape of it to her,” Marx told CBS’s The Talk in 2021. “The next day she called me - I still have this voicemail - and it says, 'Richard, I heard the song; it's a beautiful song, but I'm gonna need you to rewrite the lyrics because I'm not gonna be right here waiting for anyone.”
Streisand’s loss turned out to be Marx’s massive gain, as his version of Right Here Waiting ended up hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and turned him into a global star.
Further success followed, and Marx says that he started to realise that being pigeonholed was par for the course, and not something he should sweat over.
“It took a while for me to look at myself and go, ‘Really, dude? Just relax, just chill,’” he admits. “And so it was like overnight, and it’s been many years since I turned that corner. I’m just happy to have a catalogue of hits. 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. So I’ve completely done a 180 about that stuff.”
For his latest album, After Hours, Marx has performed another pivot, moving into swing and big band territory with his personal ode to the Great American Songbook.
