“Six Feet Apart,” Heather Mae and Crys Matthews

By Cher Guevara, Contributing Writer

Accomplished in their own rights as solo performers, singer-songwriters Heather Mae and Crys Matthews have teamed up to co-write what is possibly the first ballad of the coronavirus pandemic, “Six Feet Apart”.

The ballad, with Mae on piano and Matthews on guitar, both of them trading verses and coming together on the chorus, takes its name, of course, from the recommended social distancing guidelines during this pandemic. While most of us have felt the isolation of the distance, the loneliness eating away inside, these ladies turn the distance into a declaration of love.

They sing out in the tender chorus, “Six feet apart won’t stop us / don’t need to hold you in my arms / I still know you in the dark / just ’cause I can’t kiss you underneath the moonlight / doesn’t mean you have to feel alone tonight / let’s get closer from six feet apart”. And as lonely as many of us have felt in these times, that chorus should echo through the nations and touch a million hearts.

The production is amazing for an underground single; it reminds me a lot of Todd Rundgren’s work on some of the powerhouse ballads of the ‘70’s, it sounds polished and Top 40 radio-ready. In a just world, this song would be echoing out of a thousand FM radio stations as a chart-topping ballad.

I admit, this is the first time I’ve heard Heather Mae and Crys Matthews and I’ve already started looking for some of their other records, both as solo performers and as a duo. If you haven’t heard them yourself, give this single a spin and ease some of that loneliness in your heart.