Richard Marx

Hazard He only recorded it to prove people wrong and he considered it his worst ever song. So just how did the AOR singer’s global smash hit come about?

- Dave Ling

More than a decade ago, as a precursor to performing the song concerned live, Richard Marx astonished a sold-out audience at his London’s Royal Albert Hall show by describing the 1992 worldwide chart-topper Hazard as “the dumbest, lamest thing” that he’d ever written. He then went on to add: “The only reason I recorded it was to prove that my now ex-wife – who along with many of my friends believed it would be a smash – was wrong.”

The motto of this tale is simple: if in doubt, always listen to your wife. The song Hazard went on to become a careerdefining moment for the Chicago-born singer-songwriter.

“Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Hazard is up there with Right Here Waiting [a squelchy ballad from his second album, Repeat Offender, released in 1989] as my biggest global hit,” Marx agrees now, sounding slightly sheepish.

Unsurprisingly, 31 years after Hazard helped to propel its parent album Rush Street towards more than two million sales, Marx has revised his opinion of the song.

“I love Hazard, I still love singing it and I never play a concert without including it,” he smiles about the fan favourite. “Even after all this time, I still get a lot enjoyment from how fascinated people are with the mystique behind its story.”

It was the working out of the plotline – when a woman called Mary vanishes without trace, the finger is pointed at a local social pariah who protests his innocence despite harbouring feelings for her – that gave Marx his biggest headache. Quite literally, the rest of Hazard was handed to him on a silver platter.