Richard Marx
Inside My Head

Richard Marx is a rather well known fellow having sold over 30 million albums, penned 13 Billboard number one hits and collaborated with many known musicians over the years. Although this was some time ago, his second album Repeat Offender went multi platinum and sold in several million copies but from there it has been downhill in popularity for the american. He has released a few more album after and this will be a Europe only release with tracks from his US only releases but also with four new tracks and a whole bonus disc of greatest hits remade. As Frontiers doesn’t think we should have the second disc I can only account for the first one in this review but it would be fair to say that the second disc is good as it is tried and tested hit songs that has worked well before so there is really no reason to think that they shouldn’t work now.

Anyway it is pop rock with some touches of AOR when we are talking in terms of musical style of this album, not heavy and mixed between catchy hit based songs and ballads. Straight and to the point, really well produced with a sound that is more or less brilliant. The thirteen tracks shows some variation even though it is mostly played in a lower tempo but there are some exceptions to this as well. Richard has a good voice for this kind of music and it works especially well for the ballads but rather good for the rest as well. Looking at the quality of sound and all of that it would be unfair to say that this is anything but a high quality production, I would say that the quality is rather excellent if I am honest.

Inside My Head is a really good album, the songs are really good and Richard sings brilliantly. I would be really hard pressed to find anything particularly wrong with this album because there is a high quality feel to everything about it, but I still remain less than convinced by it. I think that it is the overall low tempo that makes it feel a bit sleepy or something like it because the album doesn’t quite grab me or beg for my attention, it is sort of just there. I would for instance not recommend it as driving music as it is too slow and mellow for that, especially if you are driving any longer distance and needs to stay awake. I think that it is very difficult to really point towards what makes this album a bit unimpressive as there really isn’t anything whatsoever that I can point towards that is wrong. So in a way it is flawlessly performed but there still is something missing.

So what to say in the end, can I recommend this album? Well, yes I can and I can assure whoever buys it that he/she will not dislike it either because it is an album that most will find rather good but probably only very few will jump high from joy when hearing it. It is a solid production that will please most listeners but probably won’t awe that many. So, this album by Richard Marx is in short like most Frontiers album, a solid, good yet unspectacular album.

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