“I’ve a constant stream of music in my head, almost like a radio station,” states Richard Marx in a shiny new press kit. As a Grammy-winning composer and producer of insanely huge hits for acts like *NSYNC, Daughtry, Luther Vandross, Leann Rimes and (ulp!) Sir Cliff Richard, Marx freely admits that his own record sales have dipped from double-platinum to “double-plywood” – but he still knows what constitutes a popular song.
Disc one of this, his first release for the Frontiers imprint, pulls material from several US-only albums including 2008’s Emotional Remains, rounded out by four newly recorded tracks, a second disc offering updated versions of his own hits like Endless Summer Nights, Angelia and Hazard.
Those flimsier songs allowed Marx to seduce the housewife market during the 1980s and 90s, but Come Running, Scars and All Over Me all serve to validate the singer’s unlikely claim that Inside My Head represents “a heavier, guitar-driven rock record”. Well, within certain parameters at least.
