Richard Marx - Don't Mean Nothin' (1987)

"Don't Mean Nothing" is the debut single by singer/songwriter/producer Richard Marx from his triple platinum 1987 eponymous ...

"Don't Mean Nothing" is the debut single by singer/songwriter/producer Richard Marx from his triple platinum 1987 eponymous album. It hit #1 on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart and #3 on the Hot 100. With the chart success of "Don't Mean Nothing" and subsequent singles from his debut album, Marx became the first male artist to reach the top three of the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart with four singles from a debut album.

The song was aided by a popular MTV music video and in 1988, Marx was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Rock Vocal Performance - Solo" for "Don't Mean Nothing". He competed against Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Bob Seger, and Joe Cocker.

Background and writing

According to Richard Marx's personal commentary about the song's origin, his manager at the time asked Joe Walsh to play slide guitar on the song and he agreed. As a fan of the Eagles, Marx felt that musically the song could have belonged on the album The Long Run. Two other Eagles members, Randy Meisner and Timothy B. Schmit, sang background vocals on the song. Marx reportedly wrote the lyrics himself and co-wrote the music for this song with Bruce Gaitsch at his first apartment on Lowry Road in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles, where Marx resided during the early 1980s.