
Source: music-news.com
Barbra Streisand turned down the chance to record Richard Marx #1 hit “Right Here Waiting.”
Marx was an aspiring singer/songwriter when Streisand reached out and asked him to write her a hit. He sent her Right Here Waiting, a song he was set to enjoy huge success with.
“I had just recently written Right Here Waiting and it was such a personal song to me at the time that I had no intention of recording it,” he told CBS’s The Talk. “I was like, ‘I’ll give Barbra Streisand Right Here Waiting; I’m not gonna do anything with it’.
“I had to messenger the cassette tape of it to her. 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.
“She actually did me a solid, because had she not rejected it I probably would never have recorded it and every once in a while I put my arm around her and I say, ‘Thank you so much for rejecting my song!'”
Right Here Waiting, once it was recorded by Marx, reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1989.