- - Richard Marx Shares How “After Hours” Album Came to Be with Help from Rod Stewart, Wife Daisy Fuentes and His Late Dad (Exclusive)

Rachel DeSantisJanuary 16, 2026 at 7:30 PM

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Brandon Marx

Richard Marx -

Richard Marx opens up to PEOPLE about his new album After Hours

The singer-songwriter is embracing a big band-era sound with his new record

Marx also opens up about his relationship with wife Daisy Fuentes and his three sons

Richard Marx was sitting in his living room one night, drinking martinis with his wife Daisy Fuentes, when he had something of an epiphany.

Frank Sinatra’s 1964 hit “Fly Me to the Moon” was playing, and before he knew it, Marx, a prolific singer-songwriter, was bopping his head along, singing along absent-mindedly to Sinatra. He apologized to his wife and raced to the piano, eager to figure out the chords. Before long, he’d slowed the song down, turning it into a ballad and furiously working through a new arrangement.

“Next thing you knew, I thought there was this beautiful love song hidden in this swing song,” he tells PEOPLE.

Soon, The Voice Australia judge was playing his version of the song to audiences around the world — and their enthusiastic response was “probably the tipping point” that eventually led him to his new album After Hours (out now), a love letter to the Great American Songbook hits he grew up on and his first album since 2022.

Richard Marx's new album 'After Hours'

Marx, 62, knew if he was going to tackle such a distinct sound, he had to do it right. So he recorded the entire thing live in the studio. Though he says the process was “scary and intimidating,” it paid off, despite his nerves, and the end result is a swinging good time best enjoyed with a chilled martini.

“I’m a guy who’s just intent upon squeezing every drop of juice out of this ride,” he says.

PEOPLE: The new album is really all about that feel-good, big band-era vibe. How did you dive into that?

RICHARD MARX: That was really one of the top three motivations, was to just make a record that people could put on when they’re cooking or when they’re having a drink or they’re just chilling out on a Sunday afternoon. I put on the Rod Stewart Great American Songbook albums, I put on Michael Bublé, I put on old [Frank] Sinatra and Dean Martin, and it makes me feel great, but I never connected those dots that I would ever do something like that.

It was so stupid of me, but I thought of it like, "Well, I would never do it because I'm a songwriter, so I wouldn’t ever want to just do a covers album." I don’t know why it took me so many years to go, "Dude, you could write half the album." It was a really fun challenge, to see if I could pretend that it was 1948 and I was pitching a song to Sinatra.

PEOPLE: How did you get in the mood? Were you drinking martinis on the couch?

MARX: Well, I do that anyway. That’s a daily occurrence, pretty much. When I want to write, I just get outside. I take a long hike. I truly believe that great melodies and lyrics are hiding behind trees and under rocks and in the bushes. I wrote almost all of the songs on this album on a long hike or walk.

PEOPLE: “Magic Hour” was a song you wrote with your wife, Daisy Fuentes. How did that come to be?

MARX: I took a long walk one day in my neighborhood, and I thought, "I love the song ‘Sway’ that Dean Martin did, and Bublé’s version is great, but I feel like it’s just so been done." So I thought, "I want to write a song that fits that." It’s a tango, it’s got a little Latin vibe to it. I must’ve turned the corner around the block and I had a melody that I couldn’t get out of my head. By the time I came home, I had the whole music written, but no lyrics.

A month later, after trying and failing to come up with a lyric, I’m on tour in Australia, Daisy’s with me and we’re laying on the beach and I’m singing, I’m humming. She looks at me and she goes, "Are you f---ing kidding me? You still don’t have words for that? What is wrong with you?" And I was like, "I just don’t know what it’s about. I don't know what the lyric is." And a couple of minutes go by and she goes, "You walked in the door with someone, wasn’t me." So I said, "Just keep talking," and then I would rhyme it. Then she came up with another line, and I would parrot, and within a couple of hours, we went from the beach to the little restaurant and had a glass of wine and we finished the lyrics right then and there. The best lines are her lines.

PEOPLE: In what ways does she serve as a sounding board for you?

MARX: She’s brutally honest, which is what you need. If something doesn’t really rock her world, she’ll go, "I mean, it’s good." And I’ll go, "Oh my God, that’s the worst. I’d rather you say it sucks." As much as I hate to hear that, the few times that she has said that, I’ve either abandoned it or I’ve thought, "Yeah, if it’s not passing the Daisy test then I have to work on it some more."

Richard Marx/Facebook

Richard Max with his three sons and wife Daisy Fuentes

PEOPLE: You just celebrated your 10th wedding anniversary on Dec. 23. How do you keep your relationship strong?

MARX: I can count on one hand the time that we’ve been apart more than two weeks. When she’s working, I want to go be with her, and she’s with me on tour all the time. We just love being together. We really love hanging out together. Our joke with each other is, "I’m still not sick of you yet."

PEOPLE: You also have a really great sounding board in your three sons Brandon, 35, Lucas, 33, and Jesse, 32 (with ex-wife Cynthia Rhodes). How has it been watching them pursue music?

MARX: It’s the most exciting and thrilling and fulfilling thing to create with my sons. I’m really close to them. We have a great relationship. When I’m in L.A., we have a designated boys’ night where it’s just my sons and me, and we go out and drink and talk about life and laugh like friends do.

I have great respect for them musically. That said, it’s a double-edged sword in that the industry itself is so hard.. Two of my sons, as brilliant as they are, have, I think, benched their musical ambitions. But my dad [Dick Marx] became so successful in the jingle business for 25 years, and he would say to me, "You got to remember, Richard, the thing that I ended up having be my career that was so successful didn’t exist for the first 30 years of my life." So I look at that and I say it to my boys. "Who knows? A year from now, you could be kicking ass at something we’ve never heard of right now." I think you’ve got to infuse a level of optimism like that to stay excited and optimistic.

Jamieson Mundy

Richard Marx

PEOPLE: Your dad was also a jazz pianist, and your mother was a big band singer, which is how they met. Did you feel a connection to them while making this album? [Dick died in 1997 at age 73, while Marx's mom Ruth died in 2021 at 85]

MARX: There were a couple of times during the sessions where I got so lost in the track and singing and these incredible musicians that it was emotional, because I thought, "I really want to open my eyes and see my parents in the control room." I got to do so much work with my dad. I didn’t get nearly enough, but I didn't get completely ripped off. I know what this album would’ve meant to him, as long as I hired him to do the arrangements, or else he would've never spoken to me again.

PEOPLE: How did John Stamos end up on the congas on this record?

MARX: Stamos and I have been friends for 10 years, and we’re neighbors. We don’t see each other that much, but we text each other a lot and he’s like, "What are you working on? What’s going on?" I sent him a rough mix of "Summer Wind," and he went, "Dude, this is amazing, but it needs congas. Let me play congas. I want to play on this record." And I was like, "Okay." We did four songs in an hour and a half. He just played and I let him go crazy. He wanted to play a little shaker and I was like, "Have at it, man. Knock yourself out." He did a great job.

Ashley Mar

Richard Marx performing in Australia in December 2024.

PEOPLE: You’ve talked before about how being typecast as a balladeer early in your career was annoying to you. How did you learn to embrace it?

MARX: I’ve always considered myself a rock singer and rock writer. I think I just bristled at the pigeonholing, at the dismissive, "You’re not really a rocker because you can sing. If you’re going to sing ‘Endless Summer Nights’ and ‘Right Here Waiting,’ you’re not really a rocker." "F--- you. Just because you can’t do both. I can do both." Over time I started to go, "Well okay, it’s not just me." And then with age comes, if you’re lucky, who cares? My life is great.

It took a while for me to look at myself and go, "Really, dude? Just relax, just chill." And so it was like overnight, and it’s been many years since I turned that corner. I’m just happy to have a catalog of hits. I see 8-year-olds playing "Right Here Waiting" on the piano and posting videos on TikTok. Are you kidding me? That song’s almost 40 years old. That’s a privilege. So I’ve completely done a 180 about that stuff.

PEOPLE: You have some great guests on this record, like Chris Botti, Kenny G, Rod Stewart. Tell me about their contributions.

Chris and I have been friends for a long time, and having him play a solo on the record was incredibly wonderful and a gift. Kenny G is one of my closest friends in the world — talk about surprising. Funniest, most bawdy… The dirtiest jokes I’ve ever heard in my life, I heard from Kenny G. He’s so brilliant. And I’m a lifelong, massive Rod fan. I’ve seen him in concert more than anybody else. Three years ago, we ran into each other in Australia at a restaurant, and it’s led to this friendship. I was in London a year ago for his 80th birthday, and we’re sitting in a pub and he says, "We should do a song together." The next day he texted me, "I was serious about doing a song if you want to. I was thinking we should do ‘Young at Heart.’" So that’s what we did. The fact that I finally got to collaborate with my hero… I adore him. I’m going on tour with him this year. He means so much to me.

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”