Richard Marx at Graceland Live

During his popular peak as a performer in the late 1980s, Richard Marx straddled the line separating album rock and adult contemporary, cranking out gilded rockers like “Don’t Mean Nothing” and “Should’ve Known Better” while topping the charts with the ballads “Hold on to the Nights” and “Right Here Waiting.” Marx’s hot streak ran into the early 1990s, with “Now and Forever” becoming his last Billboard Top Ten single in 1994, after which point the singer/songwriter maintained a solo career while also pursuing a number of interesting side projects.

Chief among these endeavors was working as a professional songwriter, a profession he pursued prior to the release of his eponymous debut album in 1987. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, he worked with pop legend Barbra Streisand, fledgling country outfit SheDaisy, teen sensations N’Sync (he wrote and produced the 2000 hit “This I Promise You”), and soul titan Luther Vandross, whose hit “Dance with My Father” won Marx the 2004 Grammy for Song of the Year. Marx’s résumé grew over the ensuing decades as he collaborated with the likes of Lifehouse, Hinder, Jennifer Nettles, and Ringo Starr, working steadily as a recording artist all the while. He chronicled his adventures in Stories to Tell, a 2021 memoir, and released his 13th studio effort, Songwriter, in 2022.