Richard Marx croons his way onto Billboard’s jazz charts for the first time in a career as a lead recording artist that dates back almost 40 years. His new album, After Hours, debuts at No. 14 on Traditional Jazz Albums and No. 18 on the genre’s overall Jazz Albums chart (both dated Jan. 31).
The set earned 1,000 equivalent album units in the United States in its first week (Jan. 16-22), according to Luminate, the bulk from album sales.
“I pretended it was 1948 and I was a young songwriter pitching a song to Sinatra,” Marx told Billboard earlier this month of his mindset behind creating the self-released After Hours. The 13-song collection blends covers of such classics as “Summer Wind,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” and “Young at Heart” (as a duet with Rod Stewart) with originals including “Magic Hour,” which he co-wrote with wife Daisy Fuentes.
(Notably, Sinatra’s Ultimate Sinatra leads Traditional Jazz Albums for a 180th week.)
Marx’s chart history expands following his ascents on pop, adult, country, R&B and rock rankings, as a songwriter and/or recording artist. He boasts three No. 1s, among nine top 10s that he’s recorded, on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, having earned his leaders consecutively in 1988-89: “Hold On to the Nights,” “Satisfied” and “Right Here Waiting.” The latter two are from his album Repeat Offender, which ruled the Billboard 200.
On Adult Contemporary, Marx’s haul as a singer stands at four No. 1s, among 14 top 10s, with reigns in 1989-94 with “Right Here Waiting,” “Keep Coming Back,” “Hazard” and “Now and Forever.”
Marx first visited the Hot 100’s top spot as a backing vocalist on mentor Lionel Richie’s 1983 smash “All Night Long (All Night).” In 1985, his Kenny Rogers co-write “Crazy,” sung by the format icon, became Marx’s first of three Hot Country Songs No. 1s as an author. Keith Urban sang their co-penned leaders “Better Life” (2005) and “Long Hot Summer” (2011).
Having leaned on crunchy guitar anthems early in his recording career, Marx earned three top 10s on Mainstream Rock Airplay in the ‘80s, starting with his debut single, “Don’t Mean Nothing,” in 1987.
Additionally, “Keeping Coming Back” dented Hot R&B/Hip Hop Songs in 1991. It features background vocals by Luther Vandross, with whom Marx teamed to write “Dance With My Father,” which, sung by Vandross, led Adult R&B Airplay for five weeks in 2003 and went on to win the Grammy for song of the year.
Marx has also penned Adult Contemporary-topping ballads for *NSYNC (“This I Promise You”) and Josh Groban (“To Where You Are”).
“I guess the reason that it didn’t translate into an album sooner was because the idea of doing a standards album never appealed to me, because I’m a songwriter,” Marx mused of After Hours. “So, even though I love to sing, and love to sing those songs, I [couldn’t] imagine doing a covers album of any genre, because that [was] just not that interesting to me. And, I just frankly wasn’t smart enough to come up with the idea to write half the album until a year and a half ago.
“The first song I wrote,” for After Hours, which Marx recorded with a 24-piece band, “was ‘All I Ever Needed,’ track two of the record,” he noted. “I wrote it so quickly and effortlessly. And then I wrote ‘Magic Hour.’ I was like, ‘Okay, this makes sense now.’ ”
