Today’s song was the fourth single and the first US #1 hit for today’s singer, who will be joining us on Friday morning at 7:40. The song describes the dilemma of meeting the love of your life, but when you are both already with someone else, and that you then have a big decision to make.
Today’s singer says that this wasn't something that happened to him, but it did happen to someone he knew. "A friend...thought that he was in the right situation, but he met somebody else, and he was, 'Ohhh...' and the girl was involved with somebody already at the time, and they just never got together. They never made a go of it...I remember him thinking, what if I had missed the right one. And all he had left was a brief time where they were hovering around each other and then they both ended up going back to who they were with..."
As we said, this song reached the Billboard Hot 100 number 1 position in 1988, preventing Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" from reaching the top spot that same week. The song was on the chart for twenty-one weeks, and left the chart at number 91
We told you how this singer’s father, Dick had started out as a jazz pianist before becoming a phenomenally successful writer of ad jingles. The “double your pleasure” Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum earworm was one of his.
But what you probably DIDN’T know is that later on, when his son was already famous, Dick Marx would score the 1992 movie A League Of Their Own!
By then, today’s singer was already way famous, but he says it wasn't ever handed to him. As a kid in Chicago, today’s singer would sing on some of his father’s jingles, and then he’d start writing his own songs, sending out demos to stars and record labels. He wanted to be a star, and the industry didn’t take him seriously.
He has said that every big label rejected him and that songwriting partners like David Foster told him to give up on the idea of becoming an artist, which was obviously crazy: In addition to great songs, he had had a fantastic mullet, and hair like that was too good to remain behind the scenes.
Don’t miss our talk with him on Friday morning at 7:40...And preorder his new memoir now!
Richard Marx...Hold Onto the Nights...I Know That Song!