"When things are too easy I lose interest in them so I find ways to complicate them to get myself interested"
About this Quote
There is a pop-writer’s candor in this admission: boredom isn’t a mood, it’s a threat. Richard Marx isn’t romanticizing chaos for its own sake; he’s describing the engine room of a certain kind of creative life, where ease can feel like irrelevance. If a melody, a relationship, a project goes down too smoothly, the mind starts reading it as already finished, already filed away. Complication becomes a self-administered obstacle course, a way to reintroduce stakes.
The intent is almost practical: he’s naming a technique for staying engaged. But the subtext is more revealing and a little uneasy. “Too easy” sounds like success without friction, validation without pursuit. For artists who came up proving themselves, ease can trigger suspicion: if it isn’t hard, was it earned? So the complicating isn’t just play; it’s a way of manufacturing meaning when meaning isn’t arriving on schedule.
In the context of a hitmaker, the line lands with extra bite. Pop is built on apparent simplicity: a hook that feels inevitable, a chorus that arrives like gravity. Listeners hear effortless; the craft is anything but. Marx’s confession points to the paradox behind mass appeal: the cleanest songs are often the most engineered, and the most “natural” emotions the most revised. It also hints at the personal cost of that reflex. The same instinct that turns a three-chord idea into a charting single can turn peace into restlessness. Complication keeps the artist awake, but it can also keep him from letting life be good without a fight.
The intent is almost practical: he’s naming a technique for staying engaged. But the subtext is more revealing and a little uneasy. “Too easy” sounds like success without friction, validation without pursuit. For artists who came up proving themselves, ease can trigger suspicion: if it isn’t hard, was it earned? So the complicating isn’t just play; it’s a way of manufacturing meaning when meaning isn’t arriving on schedule.
In the context of a hitmaker, the line lands with extra bite. Pop is built on apparent simplicity: a hook that feels inevitable, a chorus that arrives like gravity. Listeners hear effortless; the craft is anything but. Marx’s confession points to the paradox behind mass appeal: the cleanest songs are often the most engineered, and the most “natural” emotions the most revised. It also hints at the personal cost of that reflex. The same instinct that turns a three-chord idea into a charting single can turn peace into restlessness. Complication keeps the artist awake, but it can also keep him from letting life be good without a fight.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
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