It would be grossly offensive to suggest that anyone has actually thrived during the pandemic that has held the world in stasis since last spring. but Trivium’s Matthew Heafy has emerged as something of a hero over the past 16 months, engaging with an ever-growing army of followers with his imaginative and entertaining appearances on Twitch and YouTube. And with hopes of a return to some kind of normality just around the corner, the 35-year-old Orlando-based musician may just have pulled off his biggest triumph to date, by persuading 80s soft rock crooner Richard Marx to join him for a crushing cover of Marx’s 1989 power ballad smash Right Here Waiting.
The genesis of this unlikely collaboration stems from Heafy spotting that one of Marx’s three sons is a Trivium fan.
“I saw his son was wearing a Trivium shirt, so I hit him up on social media,” Heafy told the Bringin’ It Backwards podcast. “[He’s a] super-amazing guy. We stayed in touch. One day, I [wrote to him], ‘Hey, let’s do a song together.’ And then he texted me, ‘Let’s do it.’ So I did a metal version of Right Here Waiting, and he did the vocals on it.”
“Richard is one of the greatest songwriters of our time and an incredible incredible human being,” adds Heafy. “So it’s unreal that we were able to create this metal version of his mega-hit together. Stream the heck outta it!”
Excellent work gentlemen, excellent work.
