Everyone gets songs stuck in their heads that just won’t go away. They sneak into your subconscious. They are epic earworms that you find yourself humming uncontrollably, singing in the shower, or tapping the beat to with your foot or ballpoint pen when you should be working. Sometimes they even keep you awake at night. Whether they are current hits, one-hit wonders, movie soundtrack gems, holiday favorites, or songs from your youth, their catchy vocals, riffs, hooks, and choruses seem to linger for days.
Here, those songs find a home, no matter the genre. Here, those epic earworms are revisited, explained, and celebrated. Here, you may find the song that haunts you tomorrow. Here is today’s unescapable song of the day…and the story behind it.
Today’s Epic Earworm: Richard Marx — “Hazard”
Richard Marx is one of the most underrated singers and songwriters of the 1980s and 1990s. Besides writing hits for the likes of Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes, and James Ingram, Marx had quite the recording career of his own. Between 1987 and 1994, he had 14 Top 20 hits, including three number-one singles. The Grammy-winner has totaled 14 Number One singles between his solo career and his collaborations.
Marx’s most interesting chart-topper was not one of his many love songs, though. His 1982 single “Hazard” was a stark departure from his normal fare. The song tells the tale of an outcast raised in a small rural Midwest town who falls in love, only to become the main suspect when the woman is found dead. The police question him, but they cannot prove he killed her.
They have to let him go, and they drop him off at what is left of his home after it has been burned down by the locals. The video ends with a flashback to the woman saying that everyone says she should be afraid of him, but she is not. The eerie story is left open to interpretation as to whether the man is guilty or not.
Marx’s Midwestern Dilemma
Marx wrote the whole song out, but struggled with two lines. He needed a location to set the story in. The rhythm eventually dictated that he go with Nebraska to fill out the one lyric, but he still needed two syllables to fill the space for the town. Unfamiliar with the state, Marx called the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and asked if they could fax him a list of the names of every town, city, and municipality in the state. The singer soon received 16-plus pages of names. He claims he threw the sheets up in the air and then picked up one random page, pointed to a random spot on the page, and got…Hazard.
