All That California Snow

Richard Marx “Don’t Mean Nothing”

You listen to music as a kid with very few reference points. Whatever you hear early on ends up becoming the beginning of musical history as you know it, and songs that anyone with even a little context would clock as derivative exist entirely on their own merits even if you hear it side by side with whatever they’re emulating. This is why it took me decades to notice this Richard Marx song, a big radio hit when I was a kid, is basically the young Marx writing his own version of a Don Henley song, right on down to the recording featuring Eagles alumni Joe Walsh on guitar and Randy Meisner and Timothy B Schmidt on backing vocals.

“Don’t Mean Nothing” specifically feels like the final Eagles album The Long Run, or Henley’s solo stuff from the 80s, like “Dirty Laundry” or “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.” It’s in the studio gloss, the way every part of the song sounds like it’s very brightly lit, and how the guitar sounds as though it’s being played with sarcastic airquotes.

But most of all it’s in the lyrics, which aim for very Henley-esque sort of cynicism. It’s written from the perspective of a Hollywood insider who’s telling some up and comer about how it all really works. A lot of it sounds like the truth, but just enough of it sounds like an agent buttering up a fresh-faced talent to make you get that we’re listening to an unreliable narrator. If everyone has an angle and wants a piece of you, surely he must as well? He seems pretty eager for you to sign that dotted line.

This is Marx’s debut single and it was written well before he was famous, so it seems safe to say he was probably writing about his own experience of entering an industry full of people he can’t really trust. You hear Marx’s youth and drive to be a star in his voice, so much so that it’s at odds with the snarkier aspects of the song, though not in a bad way. It’s a complication that adds depth in any interpretation. Is the earnest vocal performance indicating that we’re hearing the advice from the singer’s perspective and sensing his skepticism? Is it more about this agent guy putting on a sunny public persona to soften a harsh message? The truth spoken by a living lie.

The bridge is what really makes this song click, both musically and lyrically. The first half of it is as overtly melancholy as this otherwise very cheery song gets – “Hollywood can be so lonely, make you the winner of a losing fight.” But then it shifts back into brightness and optimism very abruptly – “but the party is never over because the stars are always shining, doesn’t matter if it’s day or night.” You could take it as the punchline of the lyrics, but Marx sounds so sincere that it plays like the heart of the song. Whether you’re hearing that from the young talent or the agent or Marx’s personal perspective, it’s the part of the song where you really get that this song is coming from a love of Los Angeles and a real excitement about getting a chance to play this game.

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