Creativity Quote by Richard Marx

Collaboration is supposed to look like a montage: two musicians in a room, trading riffs, arguing over a bridge, high-fiving when the chorus lands. Richard Marx punctures that romantic image with a shrug and a punchline. "It's funny" signals he knows the expectation and is gently mocking it. The laugh is a pressure valve for a modern reality: co-writing can be intimate without being co-located, and the myth of the studio hang is often just that, a myth.

The line also functions as a quiet flex. Marx and Luther (almost certainly Luther Vandross, given Marx's songwriting history and Vandross's era-defining duets with pop and R&B) "have written many songs together" carries weight; those credits imply trust, taste, and a shared musical language. Then he undercuts the assumed chemistry with a logistical twist: they never shared air while doing it. The subtext is that the real collaboration happened through taste and editing, not proximity. Demo tapes, phone calls, faxes, managers, and later email become the third songwriter in the room.

Culturally, it captures how pop gets made: less bohemian spontaneity, more professional relay race. It also hints at power dynamics and schedules. When you're dealing with stars, time is the scarcest instrument; you build songs the way you build tours, by coordinating orbiting calendars. The humor lands because it's true, and because it reframes artistry as something that can survive distance without losing its soul.