What Is The Story Behind Hazard By Richard Marx?

“Hazard” is a song written, produced, and performed by American singer-songwriter Richard Marx.

The song is about a woman named Mary who mysteriously disappears and a social pariah who is accused of orchestrating Mary’s disappearance, despite claiming to be innocent.

The song’s music video follows this plot. “Hazard” was released as the second single from Marx’s third studio album, Rush Street (1991), on January 28, 1992, in the United States.

In April 1992, “Hazard” peaked at No. 9 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and shortly thereafter topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, becoming Marx’s third number-one single on that chart.

Internationally, “Hazard” reached No. 1 in Australia, the top three in Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, and the top 10 in New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.

“Hazard” tells the story of a relationship of some kind between the narrator and a woman named Mary. Mary disappears in suspicious circumstances, and the narrator, already shunned by many in the small village where he has lived since the age of seven (“That boy’s not right”), is immediately considered the main suspect.

However, the narrator maintains his innocence throughout the song, and the matter of culpability is left open to the listener’s interpretation.

Liking the lyric “this old Nebraska town”, Richard Marx wrote to the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, asking for a list of Nebraska towns with two syllables, finding Hazard ideal for its double meaning.

(The lyrics refer to a river; the real Hazard does not possess one, although there is a muddy creek.) Locals invited Marx to be Grand Marshal at Sherman County’s Fourth of July parade in 1993, which he accepted.

Marx considered it a “stupid song that no one would pay attention to” and only recorded it to prove his wife wrong, who had told him it was going to be a huge hit song.