Creativity Quote by Richard Marx

Richard Marx lands a neat piece of pop-world gallows humor: he calls it a joke, then immediately revokes the label, as if even naming the anxiety might jinx him. The line is built on a classic entertainer’s double bind. Artists are supposed to talk like visionaries, but their careers are measured like quarterly earnings. Marx admits the quiet math behind every album cycle: you can plan your art, but you can’t plan your marketplace.

The structure is doing most of the work. “One of two tours” sounds like choice, like strategy. Then the options arrive and both are basically the same job with different emotional weather. Even success is framed as conditional (“the album that does well”), while failure gets the sharper verb (“stiffs”), an old show-biz term that makes commercial disappointment feel like a body onstage. It’s funny because it’s true, and it’s uncomfortable because it’s not just about him; it’s about how the industry forces musicians to treat touring as both celebration and recovery plan.

Context matters: Marx came up in an era when radio hits and CD sales could define an artist’s status overnight. Touring used to be the reward. In the modern economy, it’s also the hedge, the way you keep the lights on when the record underperforms. His quip acknowledges that shift without sermonizing. It’s a seasoned pro letting the audience glimpse the machinery, then cracking a smile so the confession doesn’t sound like complaint.