Hazard by Richard Marx

TITLE: Hazard
ARTIST: Richard Marx
CHART POSITION: 3
WHEN WAS IT A HIT?: May 1992

B-SIDES?:Rich's angsty 1989 ballad, 'Right Here Waiting'

CONTEXT IN MY LIFE: I was 12 years old and 'Hazard' was the first single I ever bought - not a great thing to have to admit to people. At the time, there was an offer with Golden Grahams cereal where you saved up 3 tokens and then got a free cassette single from Our Price (which, at the time, cost about 99p.) So, sorry Rich, I didn't even spend actual money on your music.

DISCERNING OR DISMAL?: Mulleted Marx reeked of the '80s, but something about this tragic tale of lost love and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks obviously appealed to me in my pre-teen years. I never did see the accompanying video, but I believe it illustrated the untimely death of the narrator's one true love, Mary. Actually, this isn't as bad as I feared it might be, but I wish my first single had been something cool - it never is, is it? A colleague of mine recently told me that she too had bought 'Hazard' as her first single...until she remembered that she'd actually bought 'It's 'Orrible Being In Love When You're Eight-and-a-half' a few years earlier. So I suppose it could have been worse.