The month of September was eventful for three MHS students: Payton Cousins, senior; Bella Canela, junior; and Dominic Cappuccilli, junior. These three students created what some describe as a very professional-looking cover video for the song, “Waving through a Window”, which is featured in the Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen”.

The video, published on YouTube by Cappuccilli on Sept. 26, received feedback with 4,578 views and 167 likes, each still rising, with zero dislikes. The video was also tweeted by the Broadway musical, with the caption of “This #WavingWednesday cover goes all out and we can’t stop listening! #WavingThroughAWindow.”

The caption concludes the tweet by tagging the three students and including a shorter version of their popular video.

“I think we all felt a lot of love when we became this accomplished. People have been so supporting and have done more than enough to show us that. It is definitely a great feeling when people support some form of art, and I appreciate it greatly,” said Canela. “One of the great things about music is that it is always accepted and shared. Also, that no matter what else is happening, we all can come together to appreciate music, which is such a beautiful thing to have in our society.”

She continued to say how proud they are of themselves because of the time they spent on it. To them, the hard work was worth it once they had the finished product.

The decision to make the video was sudden, but according to them, it just felt right.

“The song really inspired us,” said Canela. “It sends such a beautiful message to the people that listen to it.”

She said she thought the message of the song was that everyone goes through times of loneliness. She added that she thought the lyrics truly expressed how loneliness feels.

“After I found the song, I showed it to Dominic, and we immediately became obsessed with it and the musical it was from,” said Canela.

From there, they decided they wanted to make their own version with three people singing it instead of just a solo cover.

“When I saw ‘Dear Evan Hansen’s’ reaction to this, I was extremely excited, but the reaction from other people, people I didn’t even know, was even more exciting,” said Cappuccilli. “After the video hit over 17,000 views on Facebook, I was overjoyed because I would love for everyone to hear this song and appreciate its beauty. The fact that it was our video that so many people saw made it such a special moment for us.”

Cappuccilli isn’t the only one who feels accomplished and thankful for their success; they all are.

“I am so grateful for everyone who watched, shared and liked the video because this cover meant so much to me, and I’m sure I’ll never forget how I felt when I realized that people really loved what we did,” said Canela.

Steve Fickinger, a producer of “Dear Evan Hansen” also shared the video with the caption, “This special song continues to strike a chord with people.”

The students didn’t even realize how successful they were until a while after they had published the video.

“I think when I realized that we accomplished this was when the Facebook page of the Broadway musical ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ shared our video,” Canela said about the popularity of the video. “This was a really great moment because we felt that we had done something really special, and it was a really great moment when they noticed it. I think that any form of music that is appreciated from other platforms is always an amazing thing to accomplish when striving for creativity.”

Also, the three students said they work well together. The relationship they have grew through each video.

“I am most proud of the work ethic we all carried throughout the process. We all love music and singing with a great and huge passion, so we definitely bounced off of each other’s ideas of how to go about dividing the song and transforming it into a cover with three people and new harmonies,” said Cousins. “I think I had the best group of people to do this with because we all cared about making it the best it can be while doing a great service to the song and the message it puts to people who listen to it.”

But like any other growing success, they faced problems along the way.

“When recording this song, a struggle I can think of was the recording itself. Recording definitely sounds easier than it is, and it takes practice to sing everything perfectly and try to do everything right every time you do it in order to achieve the best sound possible,” said Cousins.

They were able to overcome these struggles and allowed themselves to benefit and learn from their mistakes.

“Although it can be challenging, I definitely enjoy it and learned a lot from recording,” said Canela.

Something rather surprising is that the students didn’t have a clear cut plan when they took on this idea.

“We really just came up with things as we started, but we did record the song vocally in one day and then decided about a week later to record a video of it. It wasn’t really a dragging process. We took our time with it in order to put out the best video for people to watch,” said Cappuccilli.

Overall, Cousins, Canela and Cappuccilli are most proud of their video achieving thousands of views and being recognized by many popular accounts and people on social media. In addition to this, they also were able to bond and grow as a group of friends during the process of making the video.

Canela speaks for all of them when she said, “I really am so grateful for the people I did this with. They are both such great friends and are both very talented.”